Margaret's instinct for self-preservation, being rapidly educated along new lines since her marriage, closed her lips in the presence of Jennie and Sadie upon the great delight she found in her new acquaintance, her husband's secretary; for though the standards of value which the Leitzels held as to most things in life had at first seemed to her incomprehensible, she was of late beginning to have a glimmering understanding of them. So, upon returning to the sitting-room after Miss Hamilton's call, she repressed any expression of her happiness, and not until she and Daniel were alone in the automobile which he had hired this afternoon for her pleasure, and incidentally for his own, did she speak of it. She had not yet learned the necessity of hiding from him, also, almost everything that she felt and thought.
This is a red letter day for me, Daniel. I've found a friend! I've never had an intimate girl friend—oh! but I've yearned for one! Of all the many people I've met since I came here, there hasn't been one except that Miss Mary Aucker, who has since gone to Boston for the winter, whose society I'd prefer to that of a book or solitude. I'm not naturally a very good 'mixer,' I'm afraid, but in ten minutes Miss Hamilton and I—well, we simply found each other, deep down where we both live! It's such a novel and wonderful experience to me! she softly exclaimed, her eyes shining. "It's going to give me the greatest happiness I've ever known!"
The greatest happiness you've ever known! Why, Margaret——
I mean that I've ever known with a woman, she said soothingly.
But, my dear! he exclaimed, "what can you be thinking of? You can't make a friend of my secretary!"
If she is a lady?
But she isn't. They don't go anywhere, these Hamiltons!
They are a cultured New England family, Daniel, and if they don't go into society here, it is probably because they don't want to. I'm sure I can't imagine why they should want to. I don't mean, dear, she quickly added, not at all sincerely, "to cast any reflection upon your New Munich society; I'm speaking of society in general. It is rather unsatisfactory, isn't it? I wouldn't give up the friendship I'm going to have with Miss Hamilton for all the rest of New Munich society, I assure you."
But you must give it up! Why, my dear, the Hamiltons are renters!
'Renters?'
Yes, renters!
What are 'renters?'
You know what I mean—they don't own the house they live in, they rent it.
Oh! Margaret fell back laughing against the seat of the car. "Of course if I had known that, Daniel, I shouldn't have found Miss Hamilton congenial, sympathetic, and companionable. Oh, Daniel!" she gasped with laughing.
But Daniel's sense of humour was not developed.
You must be on your guard more, my dear, he gravely warned her, "or you will be getting yourself involved most uncomfortably with troublesome people. Do let Jennie and Sadie be your guides as to whom you should cultivate here and whom keep at a proper distance."
Jennie and Sadie be my—select my friends for me?
Instruct you as to those among whom you may select for yourself, he amended it. "They know New Munich and you don't."
And they, thought Margaret wonderingly, "think themselves 'above' a cultured, sophisticated, well-bred girl like Miss Hamilton—they!"
But, Daniel, she asked, genuinely puzzled, "that nice little woman that called yesterday, that I liked so much, said her husband was a grocer. I confess it rather shocked me. But you all seemed to approve of her. In New Munich is a grocer better than a teacher?"
He's a wholesale grocer, which makes a vast difference, of course.
Does it? And was the drygoods person who was with her also wholesale?
Mrs. Frantz? No, but she's rich, very rich. They own their handsome home at the head of our block. Listen, Margaret! While you were in the parlour with Miss Hamilton, Jennie and Sadie helped me make up the list for our party, and even I myself could not have discriminated more astutely than they did (Jennie especially) as to whom we ought to invite and whom we ought not. On Monday I'll have one of my office clerks address the envelopes for the invitations on a typewriter.
Oh, my God, Daniel! You can't send typewritten invitations!
For goodness' sake, Margaret, cut out swearing! I'd be horribly mortified if any one heard you!
Margaret was silent.
Daniel turned to glance at her uneasily, fearing he had offended her, but she was red with suppressed laughter and as she met his eye it broke forth in a little squeal.
Oh, Daniel, she sighed, "swearing isn't as bad as slang, dear. I'd much rather hear you say 'Damn it' than 'cut it out.'"
She looked so pretty in her sable furs, another inheritance from an ancestor, that, the automobile being covered, he seized her face in his two hands and held his lips to hers for a long minute.
Daniel, she said when he at last released her, "remind me to look over the list before you send the invitations. I may want to add some names."
I don't think you will, dear. We drew up the list very carefully.
I'll glance over it.
But, Margaret, he firmly insisted, "the list is complete as it stands. You can't add any name to it that would not be objectionable to my sisters and me."
I understand that the party is to be a large general affair, not small and exclusive? In that case, you know, we shall have to invite every one who has called and sent us gifts.
Impossible! Why, our butcher sent us a gilt-framed Snow-Scene! and Sadie's dressmaker a souvenir spoon!
Then at least we must invite every one who has called on me.
By no means. Wait until you have lived here long enough to have gotten your bearings and you'll see how right Jennie and Sadie and I are in drawing the line so carefully.
Margaret wisely desisted from further discussion of the matter, though she felt troubled by her conviction that she would certainly not find on that list the names of the few women of the town who had really interested her and who were probably "renters" or self-supporting or something else which, by the Leitzel standard, would class them with "dogs and sorcerers." But it was she and Daniel who were giving the party, and even though Jennie and Sadie did keep house for them, she was of course the nominal mistress of her husband's home and responsible for the courtesy or discourtesy extended to their acquaintances; and she did not like the idea of being made to appear a petty snob in the eyes of the few people of New Munich for whose opinion of her she cared. But what could she do about it?
The people they seem to approve of have been the most vulgar who have called on me, she reflected. "And the few persons of breeding and education I've met here they have flouted. Yet I recognize the delicacy of their position—Jennie's and Sadie's—living here in their brother's house and dependent upon him. I don't want to assert myself in a way to make them feel their dependence. What can I do?"
Another thing, Margaret, said Daniel in a tone of authority, "I want to ask you not to make yourself common with people beneath you."
Make myself 'common?'
Why, you are as common with my secretary as you are with Mrs. Ocksreider or Mrs. and Miss Miller!
I'm 'common?'
Don't you think you are?
Well, in Charleston we weren't considered just to say common people, Daniel, though perhaps we were over-estimated.
Good heavens, Margaret, I don't mean that you yourself are common; I certainly wouldn't have married you if I had thought that. I mean you make yourself—well, too democratic. That's what I mean, too democratic.
The prerogative of the well-born, Daniel, who don't feel the necessity for snobbishness. Have you fixed the date for the party?
Yes, the twenty-second; three weeks from yesterday. I'll have the house decorated by a Lancaster florist and I'll have a caterer from Philadelphia. He repeated with relish his astonishing intention.
But, Daniel, are you sure we can afford all that?
He laughed exultantly. "Well, my dear, I've never given a large party and I'm going to impress the town! It will be the swellest thing that was ever given here! Why shouldn't it be? I can afford it—that is," he pulled himself up, "I can afford it once in a while, and," he added with feeling, "I'm celebrating the happiest event of my whole life. You're worth all that it will cost, Margaret!"
Thanks!
You're welcome, my dear.
We must invite your step-mother to the party, Daniel.
A slight start expressed Daniel's disturbed surprise at this unexpected suggestion.
She's too old and too—well, too unworldly.
He winced from the discovery that Margaret must some time make, that his step-mother was a Mennonite, talked Pennsylvania Dutch, was wholly uneducated and, in short, a disgrace to the Leitzel family.
We must send her a card, Daniel, whether she comes or not.
No, no; she might take a notion to come!
But that would be lovely! I am so fond of old ladies. Why do you say 'No?'
I don't want her 'round! he snapped fretfully. "Don't send her an invitation! She lives only fifteen miles from here and I do believe she'd come if she were invited, she's so proud of being related to us! You see, Margaret," he added, preparing the way a bit, "she's not exactly our equal, I'm sorry to tell you."
Then, thought Margaret, "she's undoubtedly a very superior woman!"
Daniel! she suddenly proposed, "if she lives only fifteen miles away, let's motor out to see her."
We haven't time, said Daniel shortly.
Some other time then? I'd like to meet her.
Perhaps.
Won't she be at Hiram's to-morrow at the family party at Millerstown?
No.
Why not?
Because Hiram won't invite her. We have very little to do with her, my dear, except to give her her home.
You do that? She wondered at the number of people he supported.
Well, she lives in our old home near our coal lands. We don't charge her any rent.
I'm going out to see her some time, Daniel. Since you don't care to visit her, I'll take Miss Hamilton. I'd like to see your coal lands and your old home.
Daniel looked apoplectic. "Margaret!" he gasped. "Listen to me! Don't speak to any one of my step-mother! Hardly any one knows we have one and we don't want them to know it."
Gracious! Why not?
We're ashamed of her, Margaret. She's not a lady, though I don't see why that should reflect on us, since she isn't a blood relation. And as to Miss Hamilton, haven't I made it clear to you that it would humiliate me unbearably to have my wife seen in company with my stenographer?
Oh, but, Daniel, my dear, because her family are 'renters?' There, there, she patted him, "don't worry about me. I'm twenty-five years old, you know, and am surely competent to choose my own friends. And it's better to be renters than rotters. Let us go home, now, will you? It's getting late, and I'm cold—and hungry. Jennie promised us buckwheat cakes for supper. Tell me all about your brother Hiram's family," she added when Daniel had ordered the chauffeur to turn home. "How many children has he? I'll be so glad to get some children into my arms again—I'm so awfully homesick for Hattie's babies!"
There was a little catch in her voice and Daniel answered sympathetically: "I'd like to see Hattie's babies again myself! They certainly are nice little children—the most aristocratic looking children, Margaret, I ever saw. I hope," he lowered his voice, "that our children will be as aristocratic looking."
Margaret closed her eyes for an instant as though to shut out some things she did not wish to see.
How many children? she repeated after a moment.
Four: Zwingli, Naomi, Christian, and Daniel. Daniel, the baby, is my namesake of course. You see, Hiram had about decided I wasn't going to marry and that having no children of my own, I'd do well by my namesake. But, Daniel chuckled, "I fooled him, didn't I?"
Do you like his wife?
Oh, yes, he did very well, very well indeed. Lizzie's worth thirty thousand dollars.
He paused expectantly. Here was Margaret's chance to speak up and tell him what she was worth.
If she's worth that much, was Margaret's comment, "she certainly ought to be all wool and a yard wide. But I asked whether you liked her."
Why, yes, she's a good wife, returned Daniel, disappointed, his tone dejected. Why couldn't he make Margaret talk property? "Hiram married the richest woman in Millerstown. And she's a very capable and economical woman, too. You'll hear my brother preach to-morrow," he added with pride, cheering up a bit. "He's a fine preacher. So considered in Millerstown. If he had gone into the ministry younger, he'd have made his mark in his profession just as I have done in the law; but he was nearly thirty when he began to study. Yes," said Daniel as the car drew up at their door, "you'll hear a great sermon when you hear my brother Hiram preach."
It was the next day on the train on their way to Millerstown, to visit Hiram's church and his family, that an illuminating little incident occurred in the matter of the gifts they were taking to the children.
What's that package you have, Margaret? Jennie inquired, rather in the tone of a demand, as the four of them sat in two facing seats of a day coach, Jennie and Sadie having both offered Daniel the seat by the window and regarding Margaret with evident disapproval because she had not offered hers.
A book for the children, Margaret replied, thinking Jennie's question and tone both somewhat surprisingly impertinent. "An illustrated book of Bible stories. I found very little to choose from in the New Munich shops; this was the best thing I could find. I'm sure your brother Hiram will approve of such a proper book, though it's at the same time one that even naughty little boys will love—just full of gruesome pictures. That's why I got it."
But Hiram's boys ain't naughty; they're awful well-behaved, Sadie corrected this unjust aspersion.
I hope not too well-behaved, or I shan't feel at home with them. I like 'the dear, delightful bad ones,' as Riley calls them.
You had no need to buy them a present, Margaret, Jennie reproved her. "Danny gave me a dollar yesterday for you and him, and then I and Sadie each put fifty cents at—and I got nice presents for the children from us all together."
What did you pay for the book, Margaret? asked Daniel. "It looks large."
I forget exactly; three dollars, I believe, or two-fifty.
Tut, tut! exclaimed Daniel hastily. "You're too extravagant!"
My goodness! Two-fifty or three dollars yet! cried Jennie. "Money must be a-plenty with you, Margaret."
I'll tell you what, suggested Daniel fussily: "keep back the presents you brought along, Jennie, and give the book from us all, and then the next time we come to Hiram's we can use those other presents."
Yes, well, but, objected Jennie, "then I and Sadie won't have paid our full share if Margaret gave two-fifty or three dollars for the book yet."
Which was it, Margaret? Daniel inquired a bit sharply. "Surely you know whether you paid two-fifty or three dollars for the book?"
Does it matter? If you require the exact statistics I remember the price of the book was three-fifty, and they offered it to me for three.
Then, Jennie, said Daniel, "you and Sadie each give a quarter more and we'll save back the other things until the next time."
And to Margaret's unspeakable astonishment her husband's sisters opened their purses, counted out twenty-five cents each and passed it over to Daniel, who serenely received it and dropped it into his own purse.
If you're playing a game, said Margaret, holding out her hand, "I'll take my share, please—two and a quarter."
But you and I are one, said Daniel jocularly, "and what's mine is——"
Your own? asked Margaret as he hesitated.
Daniel laughed with appreciation of this witty retort. It was discouraging to Margaret that he always laughed when she was fatuous and never when she said a thing she considered rather good.
And, my dear, he admonished her, "remember after this that we always put together to buy for Hiram's children. We can do better that way, not only for the children, but it comes lighter on each one of us."
Margaret did not reply. The incident, somehow, struck a chill to her heart.
It must be, she concluded, "that Jennie and Sadie have some little income of their own and are not entirely dependent upon Daniel."
If this were true, she felt it would exonerate her from some of the forbearance she had been so carefully practising.
As they reached Millerstown just in time for the opening of the service at Hiram's church, Margaret first saw her brother-in-law from the front pew, as he stood before his congregation in his pulpit.
You take notice, Jennie had warned her on their way from the station to the church, "how the folks in Hiram's church look when we come in and walk up to the front pew."
At me?
Well, at you, mebby, this Sunday, because this is the first time they are seeing you. But it's Danny they look at mostly, such a way-up lawyer as he is, coming into their church. And every year he gives them a contribution yet.
There actually was a stir in the congregation as the party of four was ushered to the pew reserved for them, and Margaret noted curiously the look of satisfaction it brought to the faces of her husband and his sisters.
The village volunteer choir was singing a "selection" as they entered:
"We're going home to glory In the good old-fashioned way.
"In Hiram's prayer, which followed, he informed God, whom he addressed in epistolary style as "Dear God," that "the good old-fashioned way" was plenty good enough for the members of the Millerstown United Brethren Church.
Margaret, unable to keep her mind on the rambling discourse intended to be a prayer, noted that the speaker's accent and diction, while not illiterate, were very crude, that he took a manifest pleasure in the hackneyed religious phrases which rolled stentoriously from his lips, and that he wore an expression, as he prayed, of smug self-satisfaction. She also observed that, like Daniel, he was small, slight, and insignificant looking; and she suddenly realized, with a sinking of her heart, that in this uncouth village preacher she really saw her husband as he would assuredly appear if stripped of the veneer which an earlier training and a college education had given him.
As they sat down after the prayer, Sadie whispered to her: "That's Hiram's Lizzie over there with three of the children." And glancing across the aisle, Margaret saw in the opposite front pew a buxom, matronly young woman, dressed somewhat elaborately in clothes of village cut and with a rather heavy but honest and wholesome countenance; her three children, shining from soap and water, and dressed also elaborately in village style, were gathered with her in the pew.
In the sermon that Hiram preached Margaret couldn't help suspecting that he was, this morning, doing some "special stunts" to impress her, so often did his complacent glance wander down to meet her upward, attentive gaze. For indeed she couldn't help listening to him, so astonishing did his so-called sermon seem to her, so colossal his self-approval.
His theme was Lot's unfortunate career in Sodom, and in his extraordinary paraphrasing of the scriptural story he gave it as his opinion that probably one of the causes leading to Lot's downfall was the ambition of Mrs. Lot and her daughter to get into Sodom's Four Hundred. From the Lot family as social climbers in Sodom, the preacher launched forth into a denunciation of the idle, dissipated lives of fashionable women (with which he assumed a first-hand intimacy), a denunciation that seemed rather irrelevant as spiritual food for his simple village hearers. He hauled into his discourse, without regard to sequence of ideas, time, space, or logic, Martha and Mary of the New Testament, saying that some one had once asked him which of the two he'd have preferred to marry. "Martha before dinner and Mary after dinner," had been his response, and his congregation rippled with amusement and almost applauded. A few moments later he was moving them to tears by his deep-toned, solemn references to death and the grave and "the hollow sounds of clods of earth falling upon the coffin lid."
Before pronouncing the Benediction he asked the congregation to "tarry a moment for social intercourse"; and in the exchange of greetings which followed, Margaret could see how Daniel, Jennie, and Sadie revelled in the obsequiousness of most of these shy villagers before their pastor's distinguished brother and his two elaborately arrayed sisters; for Jennie and Sadie looked very expensive indeed in their near-seal coats which they were sure none but an expert could distinguish from sealskin.
When they presently went over to the parsonage, Jennie informed Margaret that Lizzie's father had "furnished for her." The parlour which they entered was fitted out in heavy old-gold plush sofa and chairs, a marble-topped centre table, a gilt-framed motto over the mantel, "Welcome," and a rug in front of the sofa stamped with the words, "Sweet Home."
At the abundant and well-cooked dinner to which they all gathered immediately after church and which was served without any superfluous ceremony, since "Hiram's Lizzie" kept but one "hired girl," Hiram entirely monopolized the table talk, even Daniel being no match in egotism for his clerical brother, and Jennie managing with difficulty to wedge in an occasional warning to Sadie to refrain from eating certain things that might give her "the indigestion."
As for the children, they sat in awed silence under the double spell of their father's flow of speech and the presence of a stranger, their new aunt. They were all three rather dull, heavy children, from whom Margaret's friendly and playful overtures could extract very little response.
Hiram boasted about himself so shamelessly that Margaret wondered why his wife, sensible woman as she appeared to be, did not blush for him. But Lizzie's Pennsylvania German sense of deep loyalty to her spouse, her reverence for him as a minister, no less than her natural simplicity and stupidity, blinded her to his painfully obvious weaknesses and made her see in him only those things in which he was her superior. He, on his part, patronized her kindly. She could not have suited him better if she had been made to order.
Yes, I'm often told by folks who hear me preach or lecture that I'm a born orator. That's what they say I am—a born orator. No credit to me—comes natural. You noticed, sister-in-law, my sermon this morning was entirely extemporaneous. Only a few notes to guide me. Nothing at all but a few notes. And did I pause for a word, sister-in-law, did I?
I didn't hear you pause, brother-in-law, responded Margaret, adding to herself, "You big wind-bag! If you ever did pause for a word, your words might occasionally mean something."
You might think I spent a great deal of time in the preparation of my sermons, continued Hiram. "Any one would think so that heard me. But I can prove it by Lizzie that I don't have to. Give me a text and get me started and it's like rolling down hill for me. Natural gift. Couldn't help it if I wanted to. Have my people laughing one minute, crying the next—story of Mary and Martha—clods of earth falling on coffin lid—humour and pathos alternately. That's oratory, sister-in-law. Why, they think here in Millerstown that they can't have any kind of a celebration without me to speak—Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Lincoln's and Washington's Birthday celebrations, Y.M.C.A. meetings, Y.W.C.A. rallies, W.C.T.U. gatherings, S.P.C.A. anniversaries. I'm constantly in demand, constantly. Nothing quite right unless Reverend Leitzel's there to speak! Ain't it so, Lizzie?"
Yes, indeed, it's something wonderful the way they're after him all the time to speak, said Lizzie with pride.
When I take my month's vacation in the summer and they have to listen to a substitute for four Sundays, oh, my, but then you hear them growl! 'The substitute may be a good enough preacher' they say to me, 'but he won't be our Reverend Leitzel.' And when I come back to them again—well, the way they flock to hear me the very first Sunday, and the way they tell me, 'That substitute never made us laugh once; he never made us shed a tear. There's no sermons like yours, Reverend Leitzel!' Ain't they always glad to see me back again, Lizzie, after my vacation?
Well, I guess! replied Lizzie, holding a large slice of bread on her palm and spreading it with butter for Zwingli.
I'm even invited to New Munich sometimes to give an address and to Lebanon and even to Reading yet, and that's a big place. You see they know I have the power to hold an audience. I never fail to hold my audience. Did you ever see me fail to hold my audiences, Lizzie?
No, indeed, they're always sorry when he stops preaching! affirmed Lizzie.
I was once approached by some men who offered to finance me as an evangelist, and if I had consented I'd be as rich a man to-day as brother Daniel is, for there ain't a more money-making profession to-day than Evangelism, every one knows that. Look at Billy Sunday's rake-offs! But I had to refuse them because they wanted me to do a certain thing that my conscience wouldn't leave me do: they said a feature of my evangelistic campaign would have to be addresses to audiences of Women Only, on Eugenics; that you couldn't have a swell, up-to-date evangelistic campaign without that big drawing card. Well, I said I could easy do that; so that part was all right. But when they told me that in order to make it a go, I'd have to interduce into my talk to Women Only, one or two sudgestive remarks, I refused! said Hiram heroically. "Not one sudgestive remark will I make, I told them. 'Take me or leave me, but I won't make one sudgestive remark to an audience of Women Only!' So," he concluded grandly, "by standing up for my principles, you see, I lost a fortune!"
Margaret glanced, now and then, at Daniel and his sisters to learn from their faces whether they considered Hiram sane; but they, far from looking alarmed or disgusted, seemed to regard the bouquets he flung at himself as a personal tribute to themselves, his near relatives, who could at least inhale their fragrance.
Yes, Hiram's a born preacher, that I will say, remarked Jennie.
Yes, from a little boy, yet, he always wanted to be a preacher, added Sadie.
He's got the gift all right, affirmed Daniel emphatically.
An expectant pause, just here, made Margaret realize that they were waiting for her to cast her bouquet at Hiram's feet. She was an amiable creature and would have been perfectly willing to oblige them if her wits had been more agile; but for the life of her she could think of nothing to say that would not too deeply perjure her soul.
Her silence, however, in no way daunted Hiram.
How did you like my sermon this morning, sister-in-law? he frankly inquired.
It was the best—of its kind—I ever heard, responded Margaret, looking at him without blinking.
Thank you, he bowed. "I'm sure you are perfectly sincere, too, in your complimentary opinion."
Perfectly sincere, said Margaret.
In what church were you raised?
My family has a perpetual life ownership of a pew in the oldest Episcopal Church in Charleston, but I must admit that it isn't often occupied.
You are a Christian, I trust? said Hiram gravely.
Margaret did not think a reply necessary, or perhaps advisable. So she made none.
Are you a Christian, sister-in-law? Hiram solemnly repeated.
I'm a Democrat, a Suffragist, a Southerner—I don't know what all! said Margaret flippantly.
Do you mean to tell me, sister-in-law, that you ain't a Christian?
I consider that a very personal question, and if you call me 'sister-in-law' again, I'll—I'll steal your little girl here, she added, slipping her arm about the unresponsive child at her side, "and take her home with me. Do you want to come to New Munich with your new aunt, my dear?" she asked the child.
Yes, ma'am.
This digression diverted the talk for a time from the all-engrossing topic of Hiram's oratorical prowess, and as there now ensued the distracting clatter of clearing the laden table for dessert, the respite continued a bit longer.
But after dinner, when they were again gathered in the parlour, Hiram continued his monologue with unabated relish, pacing the length of the room as he talked, his well-disciplined, or utterly phlegmatic, children sitting in silence among their elders, Daniel fondly holding on his knee Christian, the youngest of the three (there was a rather new baby upstairs), and letting him play with his big gold watch.
Having got the impression that Margaret was an "unbeliever," Hiram entered upon a polemic in defence of "the faith once delivered to the saints," sweeping from the earth with one fell stroke all the results of German scholarship in Biblical criticism, refuting in three sentences the arguments (as he understood them) of Darwin, Spencer, and Huxley, putting Matthew Arnold severely in his place as "a back number," rating Emerson as "a gross materialist," and himself as a godly and spiritually minded favourite of Almighty God.
Margaret soon began to feel very restive under this continued deluge. She would have liked a chance to cultivate the children, or to talk to Lizzie and try to discover whether that good, sensible face had anything behind it besides an evidently doting belief in her husband.
Probably not, she mused, while Hiram continued to blow his trumpet. "A merciful Providence, foreseeing her marriage to this unspeakable ass, made her brainless. Oh! What would Uncle Osmond have done with a creature like this Hiram? What would happen, I wonder, if I said 'damn' before him? If it weren't for the feelings of Daniel and his sisters, I'd certainly try it on him. If I find myself alone with him, I'm going to swear! I'll swear at him! I'll say, 'You little damn fool!'"
It was not until the hour for leaving Millerstown, when Margaret was taken by her hostess to an upstairs' bedroom to rearrange her hair before starting, that she and Hiram's wife were given an opportunity for a word together. What, then, was her chagrin to have Lizzie at once take up her husband's eulogistic harangue where he had left it off.
Daniel and Jennie and Sadie always say their New Munich preacher seems so slow and uninteresting after they've heard Hiram. I guess you'll think, too, next Sunday, their minister's a poor preacher towards what Hiram is.
I don't go to church every Sunday. To tell you the truth, Lizzie, I'm not awfully fond of sermons.
Oh, ain't you? I do like a good sermon, the kind Hiram preaches.
You never get tired of them?
Not of Hiram's, said Lizzie, shocked.
Of course not of Hiram's, Margaret hastily concurred.
Does Danny insist you go along to the U. B. Church, or do you attend the Episcopal?
The Episcopalians are trying to gather me into their fold and Daniel seems to want me to go there.
It's so much more tony than at the U. B. Church, nodded Lizzie understandingly. "Yes, Danny often said already that if he hadn't a brother that is a U. B. preacher, he'd join to the Episcopals. But it wouldn't look nice for him to leave the U. B's when Hiram's minister of the U. B. Church, would it?"
It wouldn't look nice for him to leave it for the other reason you mentioned.
That the Episcopals are so tony that way? Well, but Danny thinks an awful lot of that—if a thing is tony or not. Don't you, too? You look as if you did.
The word isn't in my vocabulary, Lizzie. Let me have another look at the baby before I go, won't you?
He looks like Hiram—ain't? said the mother fondly as they stood beside the crib in her bedroom and gazed down upon the sleeping infant. "I hope he gives as smart a man as what his father is."
But, Lizzie, don't you think the room is too close for him? Margaret gasped, loosening the fur at her throat in the stifling atmosphere of the chamber.
Yes, Lizzie whispered, "but Jennie and Sadie are so old-fashioned that way, they think it's awful to have fresh air at a baby. When they go, I open up."
But, asked Margaret, surprised, "why do you have to be 'old-fashioned' because they are?"
Hush—sh! They're coming upstairs to get their coats and hats. A person darsent go against them, especially Jennie. Haven't you found that out yet? I've been wondering how you were getting on with them; they'll want to boss you so!
Oh, I was bossed for nine years by the uncle with whom I lived, so I've learned how to—I'm used to it, she judiciously returned.
Do you think you can stick it out with them? Lizzie whispered. "Don't you think mebby one of these days they'll go too far and you'll answer them back? And I guess they often bragged to you already, didn't they—how they never get over an insult?"
I trust I shall never insult them!
Well, I'm as peaceable as most, said Lizzie, "but I often felt glad already that we live a little piece away from Jennie and Sadie, though I know I oughtn't to say it.'
But I still don't see, Lizzie, why you keep this room air-tight because they don't like fresh air, said Margaret, puzzled. "Do you mean you'd rather damage your baby than have them quarrel with you?"
Well, I open up as soon as they go. You see if they ever get mad at me, they'd cut our children out of their will.
Their will? I thought Daniel supported them.
Lizzie stared incredulously. "Danny supported them?" she repeated hoarsely. "Och, my souls! You thought that! As if he would!"
Lizzie looked so contemptuous of Margaret's intelligence that the latter realized their opinion of each other's brilliancy was mutual.
But, Margaret argued, "Daniel would have to support them if they were penniless. They are too old to support themselves."
They have their own good incomes this long time already, stated Lizzie. "Do you mean to say," she asked wonderingly, "that you thought they hadn't anything and yet you didn't mind Daniel's keeping them at his house with you there?"
Why should that make any difference to me—their 'having' anything?
Say! said Lizzie, her dull eyes wide open. "I always heard how in the South it gives easy-going people, but I never thought they would be that easy-going!"
Suppose your husband wanted his sisters to live here, Margaret asked curiously, "you would not consent to it? You'd oppose Hiram, would you? I can't seem to see you doing that, Lizzie."
But Hiram wouldn't want Jennie and Sadie to live here! He'd know better. He'd know that, peaceable as I am, I couldn't hold out with them; and to be sure, Hiram and I would both feel awful bad to have them get down on us. Why, they've got, anyhow, a hundred thousand dollars apiece!
And wear near-seal coats, said Margaret thoughtfully, "and rhinestone rings! How queer!"
Yes, ain't their coats grand? They paid fifty dollars apiece for them! Maybe Danny will get you one like them some time.
God forbid! I'd get a divorce if he did! Come, Lizzie, don't you be a coward—let some air into this room. I'll stand by you and take your part! she said, holding up her muff as if it were a revolver and aiming toward the next room, in which they could hear the voices of Jennie and Sadie. "Advance at your peril!" she dramatically addressed the closed door between the two rooms.
Lizzie stared in dumb wonder and slowly shook her head. "No, I darsent get Jennie mad at me. Wait till you have a baby once and you will see how they'll want to tell you the way to raise it. You'll have to mind them if you want your children to inherit from them."
Oh, Lizzie, it doesn't pay to sell one's soul for a mess of pottage!
Scarcely had she spoken when she looked for Lizzie to respond, "You married Danny!" But this bright retort did not apparently occur to Lizzie, for she only stared at Margaret dumbly.
Well, thought Margaret, "of course a woman who considered Hiram a prize wouldn't think Daniel needed to be apologized for."
Lizzie, she changed the subject abruptly, "have you ever seen your husband's step-mother?"
Once or twice or so, yes.
I've been in New Munich two months and have not yet met her, though, you know, she lives only fifteen miles away.
Yes, well, but we don't associate with her much. She's very plain and common that way, and Jennie and Sadie are so proud and high-minded, you know. They're ashamed of their step-mother.
And you, Lizzie, are you ashamed of her?
Oh, well, me, I'm not so proud that way. But Hiram he would not like for me to take up with her, he feels it so much that they have to leave her live rent free in their old home when she ain't their own mother; but Daniel and the girls won't put her to the poorhouse for fear it would make talk, and that wouldn't do, you see, Daniel being such a consistent church member and Hiram a minister. She used to come here to see us once in a while and Hiram used to be ashamed to walk with her to the depot when she would go away, because she is a Mennonite and dresses in the plain garb, and it looks so for a United Brethren minister to walk through the town with a Mennonite. People would have asked him, next time they saw him, who she was. So he used to make Naomi walk with her to the depot. Naomi didn't like it either, she was afraid her girl friends might laugh at her grandmother. But her father always made her go. And then after a while grandmom she stopped coming in to see us any more. You see, Lizzie lowered her voice, "the Leitzels don't want folks to know about their step-mother."
Because she is 'plain and common?'
Yes, and because it could make trouble. I don't rightly understand, but I think they're afraid some one might put her up to bringing a law-suit about the property. But I tell Hiram he needn't be afraid of that; no one could make her do anything against any of them, she's too proud of them and she's such a good-hearted old soul, she wouldn't hurt a cat.
Margaret was silently thoughtful as she drew on her gloves.
About six months back, Lizzie continued, "she surprised us all by coming in again to see us; it was so long since she'd been to see us, we never looked for her. And to be sure, we never encouraged her to come, either, Hiram feeling the way he does. Well, she come in to tell us she didn't feel able to do for herself any more out there alone on the old place—she supported herself raising vegetables in the backyard—and now, she said, she's too old any more to do it, and wouldn't we give her a home, or either Hiram, or either Danny and the girls. Well, the girls and Danny wouldn't hear to it. Me, I said if she was strong enough to help me with the work a little, I could send off my hired girl and take her. But Hiram said she wouldn't be able to do the washing like our hired girl did, and we couldn't keep her and the hired girl; and anyhow he couldn't have her living with us, her being a Mennonite. 'It stands to reason!' Hiram said. So she went back home again and I haven't seen her since. I pity her, too, livin' alone out there, as old as what she is. I can't think how she makes out, either! What makes it seem so hard is that she was such a good, kind step-mother to them all while they were poor, and it was only her hard work that kept a roof over them for many years while their father drank and didn't do anything for them."
Margaret still made no comment, though she was looking very grave and thoughtful.
Would it mebby make you ashamed, too, asked Lizzie, "before your grand friends in New Munich, to have her 'round, she talks so Dutch and ignorant?"
No, Margaret shook her head, "I'm not 'proud and high-minded' like Jennie and Sadie."
Well, admitted Lizzie confidentially, "I'm not, either; I told Hiram once, 'You have no need to feel ashamed of her. Wasn't Christ's father nothing but a carpenter?' But Hiram answered me, 'Och, Lizzie, you're dumb! Joseph was no blood relation to Christ.'. 'Well,' I said, 'neither is your step-mother your blood relation.'"
I suppose, Margaret speculated, "if their step-mother had money to leave them, they wouldn't feel so 'high-minded' about her, would they?"
Oh, no, Lizzie readily assented; "that would make all the difference! But, you see, she hasn't a thing but what she gets from the vegetables she can raise."
I do begin to see, nodded Margaret.
Danny never told us, Lizzie ventured tentatively, curiosity evidently getting the better of delicacy, "what you're worth!"
What I'm 'worth?' He hasn't tried me long enough to find out. But I hope I'll be worth as much to him as you are to Hiram—giving him children and making a home for him.
But I mean, explained Lizzie, colouring a little at her own temerity, but with curiosity oozing from every pore of her, "what did you bring Danny? I guess Jennie and Sadie told you already that I brought Hiram thirty thousand. And I'll get more when my father is deceased."
Are both your parents living? asked Margaret with what seemed to Lizzie persistent evasion.
My mother died last summer, she returned in a matter-of-fact, almost cheerful tone of voice. "Pop had her to Phil-delph-y and she got sick for him, and he had to bring her right home, and in only half a day's time, she was a corpse already!" said Lizzie brightly.
As though she expected me to say, 'Hurrah! Good for Mother!' thought Margaret wonderingly.
Did you inherit, too, from your parents? persisted her inquisitor.
All my virtues and all my vices, I believe, answered Margaret, turning away and walking to the door. "Shall we go down now?"
Lizzie took a step after her: "Maybe you think I spoke too soon?" she asked anxiously.
'Spoke too soon?'
Asking you what you're worth. To be sure it ain't any of my business. But I thought I'd ask you once. Hiram would be so pleased if after you go I could tell him. He wonders so, did his brother Danny do as well as he did. But I guess I spoke too soon.
She paused expectantly.
Never mind, said Margaret dully, again turning away.
Say! said Lizzie solicitously, "you look tired and a little pale. Would you feel for a cup of tea before you go?"
No thank you, Lizzie.
Just here the door opened softly and Jennie and Sadie came into the room and went to the crib of the slumbering baby.
Yes, he looks good, nodded Jennie approvingly. "You have got the room nice and warm, Lizzie. Just you keep the air off of him and he'll never get sick for you. There's a doctor's wife lives near us and you ought to see, Lizzie, the outlandish way she raises that baby! Why, any time you pass the house you can see the baby-coach out on the front porch standing, whether it's cold or warm! A doctor's wife, mind you, exposing her young baby like that! Till they're anyhow eight months old already, they shouldn't be taken into the air, winter or summer. If you didn't keep little Danny in the house all the time, you'd soon see how he'd ketch cold for you!"
Lizzie looked at Margaret solemnly, with an expression that might have been interpreted as a wink.
He certainly is a fine boy! murmured Sadie fondly, looking upon the little pink and white baby with a vague yearning in her old face.
Yes, said Jennie pensively, "babies are such nice little things. I often think it's such a pity there ain't a more genteel way of getting them."
Lizzie nudged Margaret behind Jennie's back.
It's a pity they have to grow up to be men, said Margaret.
As they all went downstairs, Lizzie held Margaret back for an instant to whisper to her: "I don't know what loosened up my tongue to-day, to say the things to you I did! Hiram would be cross if he knew how free I told you things."
About his step-mother, you mean?
No, I mean about Jennie and Sadie. You might go and tell them what I said!
Yes, I might, if I were the villainess of a play and wanted to make them cut your children out of their wills!
You won't tell, will you? Lizzie pleaded. "It ain't that I'd care so much (though to be sure, I'd like to think the children would inherit all they could), but it's Hiram would be so displeased at me talking to you the way I did."
Don't give yourself any anxiety, Lizzie; of course I shall not 'tell.'
Margaret reflected, on the way home, as, quiet and rather white, she leaned back in her seat in the train, pleading fatigue and a headache to escape conversation, that this day, somehow, marked an epoch in her understanding of the Leitzel family. She had suddenly, after two months of incredible obtuseness, recognized that they measured everything in life—duty, friendship, religion, love—by just one thing.
Yet Daniel married a dowerless wife! she marvelled.
The wild suspicion crossed her mind that Walter might have misled Daniel into thinking her an heiress, even as he had let her assume that her lover was well-born.
But she was instantly ashamed of herself for even conceiving of such treachery on Walter's part.
Sadie Leitzel looked as though she were about to collapse with the pressure of all that she had to communicate to Jennie when next morning she returned alone, at noon, from a shopping excursion upon which she had started out just after breakfast with Margaret.
Dropping her bundles upon the centre table in the sitting-room, where Jennie sat in the bay window darning Daniel's socks, she dropped herself upon the sofa with a long breath of mingled excitement and exhaustion.
Well, did she get her dress? And where is she at? Jennie inquired.
No, she didn't get her dress! breathed Sadie, taking off, one by one, her veil, gloves, hat, furs, overshoes, and coat. "I guess she didn't have an intention of getting a dress when she started out with me! I had the hardest time to get her to even look at their things at Fahnestock's. She seems to think, Jennie, that New Munich hasn't anything good enough for her to wear!"
Did she say that? demanded Jennie.
Well, when she had only just gave a careless glance at some of their ready-made evening dresses, she shook her head and said to me, 'There's nothing here; I'll have to wait until I go to Philadelphia some time.' And when I wanted her, then, to get goods and take it to Miss Snyder, she said Fahnestock's had such a cheap, poor quality of goods, not worth making up!
Well, pronounced Jennie, "I guess if our New Munich stores are good enough for you and me, they're plenty good enough for as plain a dresser as what she is! Our clothes are a lot dressier than hers! The idea!"
Yes, the very idea!
And after Danny's telling her he wanted her to have a new dress! And me telling her that her dresses that she's got give us all a shamed face!
All she got new for herself, said Sadie, "was another pair of those long white kid gloves at four-fifty a pair. I told her silk ones would do just as good, and them you can wash. But she didn't listen to me; she just took my hand and held it out to the saleslady and told her to measure it and," added Sadie, a veiled pleasure coming into her eyes, "she got me a pair of long white kid gloves, too, and paid for them out of that twenty-dollar check Danny gave her!"
Oh! cried Jennie, shocked, "when Danny gave it to her for a dress yet! What'll he say anyhow?"
She knows he's so crazy about her, she don't seem afraid to do anything! said Sadie.
He'll soon stop giving her money if she spends it on other ones instead of for what he tells her to buy!
Yes, I guess! But me—I never had any long white kid gloves before, Jennie! Sadie could not repress her beaming pleasure. "They'll feel grand, I guess."
Four-fifty is too much to put into a pair of gloves; your white silk ones would do plenty good enough.
But she got you a pair, too, Jennie! Here they are, added Sadie, fumbling among her packages on the table. "She asked me your size and got you a pair, too."
I won't wear them! I'll get the money back and give it to Danny! declared Jennie, who, according to her lights, was as scrupulous as she was "close." "It ain't right to Danny for her to squander his money like that. My gracious! Thirteen-fifty for just gloves! You ought to take yours back, too, Sadie!"
But the saleslady tried one of mine on and stretched them, returned Sadie, not very regretfully. "And mind, Jennie," she hastily diverted her sister from her suggestion, "mind what she did with the rest part of the twenty dollars!"
What? demanded Jennie.
She spent every cent of it buying presents for her sister's children in Charleston! When I told her Danny wouldn't like it at all for her to do that, she said, 'Oh, but Daniel loves my little nephew and nieces; he will be glad to have me send them something from us both'; and she put in the package a card, 'From Daniel and Margaret for the three dearest babies in the world.'
My souls! Jennie exclaimed. "What'll Danny say yet—her using up all that twenty dollars and nothing to show for it!"
Except three pairs of white kid gloves. Sadie shook her head pensively, but still with a covert gleam of pleasure in her own share of the "rake-off."
Well, said Jennie with emphasis, "I'll certainly give her a piece of my mind! Where is she at?"
She said as it was twelve o'clock, she'd go to Danny's office and walk home with him for dinner; and what do you think she gave me as her reason for doing that?
Well, what?
She said she wanted a chance to see that Hamilton girl again that works for our Danny! Did you ever?—when we all told her already she can't associate with Danny's clerk!
Well, Sadie, said Jennie grimly, "Margaret's easy-going and she thinks we're the same. She'll have to learn her mistake, that's all. She ain't going to run with that Hamilton girl, and that's all there is to it! Enough said!"
Och, Jennie, if you'd been along this morning you'd have wondered at her the way she acts, speaking so awful friendly and pleasant to the girls that waited on us in the store and even saying, 'Thank you, my dear,' to a little cash-girl! Yes, making herself that familiar! And then when Mrs. Congressman Ocksreider come along through the store and I poked Margaret that she should stop and speak to her, Margaret just nodded and walked right a-past her, though you could see that Mrs. Ocksreider was going to stop and talk to us! And, Jennie, I wanted the store-girls to see us conversing with Mrs. Ocksreider. I would have stopped and talked with her myself, whether or no, but she looked mad and sailed right a-past me the way Margaret had sailed a-past her, and I heard two girls at the button counter tittering and saying, 'Did you ever get left?' I was so cross at Margaret, I told her, 'You hardly spoke to her and she's Mrs. Congressman Ocksreider and worth a half a million dollars!' and Margaret answered me, 'I didn't think she was worth two cents any time I've talked with her. But if she's a member of Congress! Why, Sadie, you are deceiving me, Pennsylvania is not yet a Suffrage state!' she said, and I told her I didn't say it was and certainly hoped it never would be. 'But,' I said, 'that's neither here nor there, whether Pennsylvania's a Suffrage state! What I wish is that if you have to cut any one, let it be cash-girls and not our most high-toned lady-friends,' I said.
And what, asked Jennie, "did she answer to that?"
She said, 'Oh, Sadie, I feel quite too humble to want to 'cut' any one, even pretentious people like your Congressman's ordinary little wife!' 'Well,' I said. 'You're got no need to feel humble, now that you're married to our Danny!' But, Jennie, said Sadie, looking bewildered, "think of calling Mrs. Ocksreider 'ordinary little wife!'"
Well, I think! It was enough to give you the headache, Sadie, such a morning as you've had!
But do you think, mebby, Sadie asked, a little awe-struck, "that Governors are higher than Congressmen—Margaret thinking herself better than Mrs. Ocksreider yet!"
It would look that way, said Jennie, also impressed.
Here she and Danny come! Jennie announced at the sound of the opening of the front door. "They're laughing; so I guess he don't know yet about that twenty dollars!"
And I guess she listened to me after all, added Sadie, "about going in there to his office and acting familiar with Miss Hamilton, or else Danny wouldn't be laughing with her!"
Had they known what had really taken place in Daniel's office while they had been sitting here discussing Margaret (who, to tell the truth, was far more of an enigma to them than they were to her), they would have considered Daniel's laughter, just now, as he entered the house with her, to be nothing short of lunacy.
A half-hour earlier Daniel, on returning to his private office from a tour of inspection through his other offices, had heard, to his surprise, from the adjoining room where his secretary was supposed to be working, her voice in earnest conversation with some one. The door between his room and hers was ajar and he could distinctly hear what she was saying, the character of which was so far removed from any phase of the legal business of his office that Daniel was dumbfounded. It was sacrilege to introduce here anything that did not pertain strictly to the work of the firm.
The religious introspection, Miss Hamilton was saying, "so widely engendered by Emerson's writings in men and women of a high type, has come to seem to us, in these days, rather morbid; we consider it as unwholesome, now, to think too much about our spiritual, as about our physical, health. Then, too, the struggle for existence being sharper, people have less time to sit down and investigate their souls; they've got to keep going, or be left behind in the race."
In their effort to win in the race, however—what they call winning—they're very likely to lose their own souls; and 'What profiteth it a man?' spoke another voice in reply, a voice that brought a quick flush to Daniel's face; a flush of strangely mingled emotions: of anger that she was here with his secretary, and of the joy with which the sound of her voice, the mere ripple of her skirts, never failed to thrill him.
The art of Mrs. Humphry Ward, Miss Hamilton was again speaking (he had missed a connecting link through the shock of discovering Margaret's presence), "has been a steady, upward growth and development: every novel produced by her is more artistic than its predecessor. But though her art is now at its climax, she is no longer read as she used to be, because her point of view is one that the world has passed by; the women of her books are the ideal feminine creations of fifty years ago and they don't interest us any longer. Now most of us have not yet grown up to Bernard Shaw's point of view, yet we are nearer to him than to Mrs. Ward. To my mind the whole feminist problem is an economic one. No man or woman can be spiritually free who is economically dependent, Emerson and Marcus Aurelius and the Christian Scientists to the contrary notwithstanding. Even the vote isn't going to help women until they make up their minds to 'get off of men's backs,' as Charlotte Perkins Gilman says."
How about married women who are bearing children? asked Margaret. "They've got to be financially dependent on some one."
Since the state does not support women who are giving citizens to it and who are thereby disabled from self-support, they should have a legal right over a fair proportion of their husband's income.
But in America men don't need to be coerced by laws to treat women generously, suggested Margaret.
That's your Southern idea. A self-respecting human being does not want generosity; she does not want to stretch out her hand and ask for what she needs. It is humiliating, degrading. Fancy a grown woman asking a man, 'May I buy a hat to-day?' I'd rather take in stairs to scrub!
Well, Margaret returned, "I shall educate all my daughters to professions, because, quite apart from the economic side of it, women become such drivelling fools when they live in aimless idleness, when they have no definite interest in life. And they are so discontented and restless. An occupation, an interest, surely makes for happiness and for a higher personal development."
I believe, said Miss Hamilton, "that a mother wrongs a daughter, just as much as she would wrong a son, when she fails to educate her for a self-supporting occupation. Look at these women of New Munich who live only to kill time—how they lack the personal dignity, the character, that a life of service, of producing, gives to either man or woman! Of course mere work doesn't ennoble—beasts of burden can work—it's work that vitally interests us, as you say, and that we love for its own sake, that is the joy and health of any soul."
Do you love being Mr. Leitzel's secretary like that?
Of course not. Being Mr. Leitzel's secretary is two thirds drudgery and only one third humanly interesting. I'm threatening to take to the platform to expound the Truth that women who have to support themselves are invariably overworked, while women who live on men haven't enough to do to keep them wholesome. Middle-aged married women, for instance, whose children are grown up, go almost insane for want of an interest in life. No wonder human creatures so situated grow fretful and petty and small-souled.
Perhaps the window-smashing Suffragette is only reacting from too long want of occupation, suggested Margaret. "The emptiness of her life makes her hysterical and she shrieks with rage and throws things! But, my dear, why do you, clever as you are, remain in a position that is two thirds drudgery? Drudgery is for dull people, who of course prefer it to work that would tax them to think."
It is a stepping-stone for me to the bigger work I shall some day do, Mrs. Leitzel.
What is that?
Something splendid! Miss Hamilton responded in a voice of quite girlish delight. "Something in which you shall have a share, if you will, a very big share! I'll tell you all about it one of these days. We haven't time now. It's lunch time and I have only a half-hour."
When can we get together again? Margaret eagerly asked. "I am just living for these times with you!"
And you must know, responded Miss Hamilton with feeling, "what they mean to me, starved as I've been for companionship in a place like New Munich! Well, I'm free every evening. And we could take walks any afternoon between five and seven that you were not engaged."
Then as soon as people have finished giving parties in my honour, I shall be free to be with you as much as you'll let me be, Miss Hamilton. I shan't have to go to parties that are not given specially for me.
Of course not. You couldn't keep it up. For a woman like you it would be too deadly.
This, to Daniel, was a new and upsetting point of view; he was so sure that all women in Miss Hamilton's position were envious of the social rioting of women placed as his wife was. And here was Margaret planning to discard "society" for evenings and rambles with his stenographer! As if Miss Hamilton were not uppish enough already from her constant offers of higher salaries! Why, even as it was, he could hardly put up with her air of independence; and if he permitted his wife to take her up as an intimate friend—well, of course he would have to emphatically put a stop to the thing. He thought he had expressed himself definitely enough to Margaret last Saturday while they were automobiling, but evidently he had not.
I'll make myself unmistakably clear this time! he resolved. "I'll let Margaret know that I am not accustomed to having my wishes set aside as of no importance!"
Ten minutes later he and Margaret sat facing each other from either side of his flat-topped office-desk.
Miss Hamilton's conscience-clear self-possession as she had passed through his office to go to her luncheon, and his wife's equally guiltless aspect as she had greeted him with cheerful affection, had been a little disarming, it is true, to his determined purpose. But Daniel was not readily diverted from a line he had decided upon, and Margaret's easy indifference to his expressed wish as to her associating with Miss Hamilton had aroused his obstinacy. And Daniel's obstinacy was a snag to be reckoned with.
So, seated opposite her at his desk, he had expounded to her very forcibly his reasons for prohibiting any social relations whatever with any one of his office staff.
And now, he concluded his harangue, "I lay my command upon you, my dear."
Oh, but, my dear! laughed Margaret, "that's rather absurd, you know! Now listen, Daniel. If you warned me against Miss Hamilton as a person who was immoral or illiterate or ill-bred, I should of course see the reasonableness of your objection to her. But when she is really superior in every respect to every one of the people you do want me to be intimate with: better born, better bred, more intelligent; when my intimacy with her is going to mean to me more than I have words to express—a close friendship with a congenial and stimulating mind and character—you can't expect me to give it up for such reasons as you offer me, Daniel, chief among them being that she works for her living. But in the South we are so used, since the war, to seeing gentlewomen work for their living, and we are so unused to meeting, socially, people like the Ocksreiders and the Millers, who tell me (one of them did) that her house is 'het by steam' and who say, 'Outen the light'—well, dear, you see," she concluded, rising, "it is ridiculous to discuss it. Let us go home to luncheon."
Sit down, Margaret.
But I'm famishing, Daniel. I'm weak with hunger. You'll have to take me home in a taxicab if you don't take me soon.
Sit down! You've got to promise to obey me in this matter, Margaret.
Oh! her voice rippled with laughter, "this is the twentieth century A.D., not B.C., Daniel. You're mixed in your dates! And you seem to forget you married me, you didn't adopt me."
You must drop at once any further relations with my secretary.
But, dear, she exclaimed in surprise, "haven't I yet made it clear to you that I don't intend to?"
I am accustomed to being obeyed, Margaret!
By whom? Your wives?
Come, come, I want your promise.
Daniel, she plead with him, "please don't be so tiresome! I am sure that you, clever lawyer that you are, must recognize that my position is quite impregnable and yours weak and indefensible, asking me to be friends with people who 'outen the light' and to cut one with whom I can have such improving conversations as that to which you ignominiously listened just now! Why didn't you honourably close your door? Could you understand our deep remarks, Daniel?"
I'm waiting for your promise, Margaret.
Again Margaret rose. "I'm hungry and I'm going home."
Margaret, said Daniel incredulously, "surely you are not deliberately refusing what I ask of you?"
As surely as I'd refuse to walk a tight-rope at your behest, my lord.
You defy me? he asked quietly, his lips white.
It was her turn, now, to look incredulous. "But, Daniel, how can you take it to heart like this? How can you suppose yourself better qualified than I am to choose my friends? Next thing," she laughed, "you'll be telling me what books I may not read!"
Do you intend to obey me?
I hope I know my wifely duty too well to spoil you, my dear. 'Obey' you indeed! She tweaked the tip of his nose derisively.
You will obey me, Margaret, or—— He paused helplessly.
Obey me! she mocked him, "or die, woman! Well, Daniel, if it comes to force"—she looked at her pink finger nails—"I can scratch!"
She suddenly bent and kissed his forehead. "Do come home!"
When I've had your promise.
Daniel, a woman in these days who 'obeys' her husband ought to be ostracized, or arrested and confined in an institution for dangerous lunatics!
Daniel looked at her meditatively. "I'm certainly up against it!" he was saying to himself. "I could be firm against tears or temper; but when she just jokes about it and laughs at me and goes on doing as she pleases, what can I do with her?"
Margaret, he said, "I've never quarrelled with any one in my life, but," he added, a little icy gleam in his eyes that did chill her for the moment, "I've always had my own way!"
Which has, of course, been dreadfully bad for you. It's well you've married a wife that is going to be very firm with you!
Daniel bit his lip to keep from laughing. Not for an instant did he think of yielding. The difficulty of the situation served only to aggravate his obstinacy. There was more than one way of getting a thing, and Daniel was not at all above resorting to cunning. Half the successes of his career had been the result of his cunning. He did not call it that; he named it subtlety, far-sightedness.
I want to ask you something, Margaret; sit down.
She sighed and dropped again into the chair opposite him.
You bought your new dress—frock—gown, this morning?
She shook her head, too weary and hungry to speak.
You didn't?
I told you I didn't intend to get anything.
But we all told you to! I wish you to!
Can't get anything in New Munich. Don't suppose you'd want me to go to Philadelphia or Lancaster just now, for a gown, with the expense of the party on your hands?
That would be an unnecessary extravagance.
I shall buy no clothes in this village while I have what I have.
And that twenty dollars I gave you?
What about it?
I gave it to you for a gown.
I know you did. But I told you last Saturday I didn't want one.
Did you cash the check?
Yes.
Where is the money?
Spent.
What! Spent for what?
Oh, Daniel, you busybody! Well, it was spent for kid gloves and presents for Hattie's babies from you and me. We needed the gloves; I didn't need a gown; you seemed anxious to have me squander twenty dollars, so I sent six dollars' worth of things to the babies in Charleston.
Without consulting me!
But there was nothing to consult about. And you seemed so determined to have me spend twenty dollars.
For a frock.
Margaret flopped her head wearily on her hand and did not answer.
You say 'we' needed the gloves. Did you buy me some? I don't need any.
I bought some for Jennie and Sadie, she answered mechanically.
Daniel's face turned red. "What did you spend on them?"
I don't know—twice four-fifty. You multiply it.
Nine dollars for gloves for them! Good heavens! But, Margaret, they have their own money.
That's nice of them—I mean for them. Ah, Daniel, won't you come home?
The time has come, Margaret, when you and I must come to an understanding about your—your income.
Won't it do after dinner?
It is a matter for private discussion and we are here alone now. Let us settle it. In the first place, he said impressively, "it is time that I took over the management of your finances. Does Walter have them in charge?"
Daniel, said Margaret gravely, a faint colour coming to her cheeks, "Walter surely did not give you to understand that I had any money?"
No. You did.
I? How?
You said you were one of your uncle's heirs.
Only to the old homestead, Berkeley Hill. Nothing else.
They looked at each other across the table, Daniel's small, keen eyes meeting steadily her faintly troubled ones.
Did you think I had money, Daniel?
What is the homestead supposed to be worth and how many heirs are there?
Hattie and I own it. I don't know what it is worth. It is awfully out of repair, you know.
But Walter pays you rent, of course, for your share in it?
Oh, no, he couldn't afford to.
Couldn't afford to? When they live like millionaires! Oriental rugs, a butler to wait on the table, solid silver, and expensive china—anyway, it looked expensive. And they can't afford to pay you rent?
All those things were inherited, Daniel, along with the place, the butler included.
Then you own those rugs and that silver and china?
Jointly with my sister, yes.
But that's property, Margaret. How, then, are you receiving your share?
I'm not receiving it.
Why not? I hate that slipshod Southern way of doing business! You ought, of course, to be drawing an income from your half of that place.
But it yields no income.
Isn't any of the land cultivated?
The land consists of two square miles of woodland about the house. Walter says the place, as it is, couldn't even be rented; and none of us have any money to spend in fixing it up; so there you are. It's a home for Hattie's family, that's all.
Gracious!
Is it a shock to you to find me penniless? asked Margaret gravely. "Wouldn't you have married me if you had known?"
She was acutely conscious of the fact that since she had married him for a home, she certainly could not judge him very critically if he had married her for a supposed fortune.
Daniel looked at her speculatively. Would he have married her if he had known? Well, he was pretty certain that he would have; that at that time, incredible as it might seem, her charm for him outmeasured any dower a wife might have brought him. But now? Did he rue his "blind and headlong" (so he considered it) yielding to her fascination?
His eyes swept over her appraisingly, over her dark hair, her soft dark eyes, the curve of her red lips, her broad, boyish shoulders, her fine hands clasped on the top of the desk, and he knew that he adored her. Not even in the face of the shock he felt at learning of her pennilessness, and on the head of her audacious defiance of his wishes, could he regret for an instant that she was his—his very own. And it suddenly came to him, with a force that sent the blood to his face, that her being comparatively penniless (for of course he'd insist on getting something out of that Berkeley Hill estate), her present absolute dependence upon him made her all the more his own, his property, subject to his will. If she were penniless, he held her in his power. It was with the primitive instinct of a savage that he gloated over his possession, the most precious of all his possessions.
I shall teach her this much about the value of money (of which she seems as ignorant as a child): that the price of her board and clothing is obedience to me!
Yes, Margaret, he at length replied, "I would have married you if I had known you were penniless. I married you because I loved you."
She did not tell him that there he had the advantage of her. She envied him his clear conscience in the matter. A shade of respect for him came into her countenance as she looked at him, a respect she could not feel for herself on the same score.
He took a small blank book from his desk and a crisp ten-dollar bill from his purse and laid them before her.
This is the first of the month, I shall give you ten dollars a month for pocket money, and you will keep an account of your expenditures in this book and show it to me at the first of each month. Anything you need to buy which this allowance won't cover you can ask me about. You seem to know nothing of the value of money, and it's time you learned. I can't trust you with more than a small sum, since you at once go off and squander it on other people instead of spending it for yourself—or for what you were told to spend it for. No more of that, my dear! Your allowance is for your own needs. When you want to make gifts, you consult me.
She dropped the money into her bag, but she did not pick up the blank book.
Daniel took it up and held it out to her. She hesitated, but dreading further discussion with him if she informed him that she had no intention of accounting to him, like a school-girl, for her use of ten dollars a month, she tucked the book also into her bag.
You must sign over to me the power of attorney to collect rent from your brother-in-law for your half of that estate. I shall look into the matter, and if I feel that the property justifies it, I'll expend some money on it, and then we can rent it at a high rate, too high, probably, for Walter's means. He'll have to move out and live elsewhere.
Again she did not contradict him, while she privately determined to write to Walter herself that very day and warn him that she was not a party to any suggestions which Daniel might make as to Berkeley Hill.
And Daniel was privately telling himself that it would not be any time at all before he would contrive to get over into his own hands that entire estate.
Also, he said to her, "I shall claim for you one half of all the contents of the house, the books, pictures, china, silver, furniture——"
Butler, inserted Margaret.
Well, we'll leave them the butler, grinned Daniel. "He appeared to be more out of repair than anything else on the place."
The bare suggestion of bringing their family heirlooms into such a setting as that of Daniel's New Munich house seemed to Margaret like horrible sacrilege.
I'd like to see anybody make Harriet strip Berkeley Hill of half its belongings! she smiled.
But if half its belongings are yours?
Uncle Osmond never meant them to be taken from the old home.
His will doesn't say so, does it?
Of course not. He gave us credit for a few decent feelings.
Daniel regarded her in perplexity. How was it that she could weakly let herself be so absurdly imposed upon by her sister and brother-in-law as to her own property, all she had in the world, and yet, when it came to a matter like this of his secretary, be so hard to manage by a man of his resolution?
He gave you credit, too, it seems, for having no business sense. Well, fortunately for you, you've got me to take care of that end for you now. I'll make that estate yield something to your sister's advantage as well as yours. And now, he concluded, rising, slipping into his overcoat, and picking up his hat, "just one more word: understand, my dear, that when you act like a naughty, disobedient, small girl"—he punctuated his words by tapping her shoulder with his derby—"you will be treated like one and have your allowance cut off. Eh? So I trust we'll hear no more of this nonsense about my secretary."
I trust so, too.
Good!
But, added Margaret as they went forth together to the street, "I don't just see how you're going to get out of supporting your legal wife, so long as I consent to let you support me."
You 'consent' to let me? Now what do you mean by that nonsense? Some of that 'Feminist' talk, is it, that Miss Hamilton was trying to stuff you with?
Never mind, said Margaret. "I won't explain what I mean, for if I do, you'll begin to argue with me; and I refuse to argue any more about anything until I have had a good, square meal."
And so it was that in spite of the revelations of the past hour in Daniel's office, and the talk so illuminating to them both, Jennie and Sadie had the surprise of hearing them come into the house together, laughing and talking as though nothing whatever had occurred to call for their brother's solemn displeasure with his heedless and irresponsible wife.
Margaret did not, of course, think for an instant of giving up her friendship with Catherine Hamilton; but when she suggested the Hamilton family and a few other people whom she liked, but whose names were not on the invitation list, be invited to their big reception, she met with an opposition to which she was obliged to yield.
To invite such folks as those Hamiltons, that don't even own their own home, little as it is—well, it would just lower the tone of the party, that's all! Jennie pronounced.
But I'll be responsible for keeping up the tone of the party! Margaret gayly volunteered.
She quickly recognized, however, that in a matter like this, co?peration or compromise between the Leitzels and her was impossible and that she must stand aside and let them give their party in their own way. She carried her self-obliteration so far as to even refrain from suggesting, on the auspicious day of the party, the removal from the dining-room sideboard of the life-sized, navy-blue glass owl which was a water pitcher, and the two orange-coloured glass dishes that stood on easels on either side of the owl.
She did spend rather a troubled half-hour in wondering how, since the invitations were of course in her name and Daniel's, Catherine Hamilton would regard the fact that she was not invited. But the absurdity of the Leitzels' delusion that they could withhold or bestow social recognition upon her friend must be so manifest to Catherine that surely she could not take it seriously. It seemed to Margaret that to let this trifling, vulgar episode cast even a shadow upon the ideal friendship into which she and Catherine were growing was to belittle and dishonour it.
I can't offer her any explanation. I can only trust to her large-minded understanding of my situation.
She had an uncomfortable consciousness that it was a situation which Catherine herself would not have tolerated.
Even 'Hiram's Lizzie' considers it unbearable, she reflected. "Why, I can't offer any least hospitality to any one unless my sisters-in-law approve of the individual! I can't ask Catherine Hamilton to dine or lunch with me! Which means, of course, that I can't accept her hospitality. It's rather grotesque!"
Yet when she considered how devotedly Daniel's sisters served him, how minutely they attended to every little detail of his comfort, in a way most men, she was sure, would have found harassing, but which to Daniel seemed essential to his well-being, she knew that he would never be able, without great misery, to live apart from them, and that he certainly would not entertain the idea for a moment.
And as for them, their occupation, their purpose in life, would be taken from them, if they didn't have Daniel to fuss over.
Two days before the date of the reception the evening papers gave New Munich a lurid description, furnished by Jennie and Daniel, of every detail of it, the Philadelphia caterer and the Lancaster florist being advertised in headlines that made Margaret's flesh creep. She had a vision of the consternation of her Charleston relatives should they ever see that paper, and she was thankful that the distance that separated her from them precluded the possibility of their learning of her association with such blatant vulgarity—unless (awful thought!) Daniel should be visited with the idea of mailing them a marked copy!
When, the next afternoon, Margaret was out for a country walk with Catherine Hamilton after office hours, she decided that it would be better to refer casually to the prospective party, rather than so obviously avoid mentioning it.
Fancy me to-morrow night, Catherine, lined up with Mr. Leitzel and his sisters for two or three hours to shake hands with over one hundred people and make to each one precisely the same inspired remark: 'Mrs. Blank, how do you do? I am glad to see you. I am so glad you got here!' If I could only vary it a bit! But no, I shall have to say those self-same words exactly one hundred and seven times. Isn't it deplorable?
A faint tremor in her voice as she asked the question caused her friend to turn and look into her face; and something in the strained expression of the beautiful eyes which Catherine Hamilton was growing to love moved this rather austere young woman to a sudden pity; for Catherine, though a girl of keen wit and of a strong, independent spirit, was full of feeling; a combination of qualities which gave her a charm for those of her own sex that she did not have for men.
Obeying an impulse of her heart, she suddenly stopped in the woodsy path where they walked, put her arms around Margaret and clasped her close.
And Margaret, at the unexpected touch of understanding love, almost the first she had ever known in her life, held herself rigid in her friend's embrace that she might not burst into passionate crying, while she clenched her teeth to choke down the pent-up emotion which in this moment could hardly keep its bounds.
She released herself quickly, and for an instant turned away.
When she again spoke, her voice was even and natural. She had not let herself shed one betraying tear.
You promised to tell me, Catherine, about that career of yours, you know, to which your present work is a stepping-stone, and what my part is to be in it.
Catherine, eager to launch forth upon her hobby to her new friend, glowed with enthusiasm as she talked.
I have come from a race, Margaret, that for generations have been teachers, college professors, ministers, public school superintendents—the pedagogue seems to be born in every one of us. And it's in me strong. So I am going to devote my life to the establishing of a school for girls in which all the training shall converge to one ideal—that of service—as over against that of the usual finishing school, whatever that ideal is! And, Margaret, here's my point: I'm going to make my school fashionable, a formidable rival of those futile, idiotic institutions in which girls from the country are taught how they must enter a drawing-room or step into an automobile, and are quite incidentally instructed, cautiously and delicately, in every 'branch' in the whole category of learning, so that they may be able to 'converse' on any subject whatever without betraying the awful depths of their ignorance!—the vast expanse of their shallowness. My school shall teach girls that life is meant for earnest work, because work means physical and spiritual health and happiness. My school shall make girls ashamed to admit they've ever been to the other sort of 'finishing' school. It's going to put that sort of school out of business, Margaret! I tell you, the coming woman is going to be the efficient woman. The unqualified of our sex will take a back seat, just as unqualified men do.
I'm of course entirely in sympathy with your idea, Catherine, but I hope your 'service' education includes home-making and motherhood. Leave us a few of the old-fashioned women, won't you?
My dear, don't worry about homes and husbands and babies. It is the futile fashionable woman, not the disciplined, thoughtful, college-bred woman, that refuses to have children. I've never known an earnest woman that didn't love children and yearn for motherhood. The trouble is, men are afraid of the earnest kind. They marry the frivolous, parasitical women, who live upon them like lotus flowers, sapping their vitality and giving nothing in return. Yet you'll find men opposing college education for women, not realizing that a woman who has stood the discipline of a college course has developed a force of character that does not shrink for a moment from the further discipline and burden of motherhood, but welcomes it as her privilege and blessing, while the so-called 'society woman' will none of it. You know, Catherine continued, "in the days when home-making was necessarily an absorbing occupation, it lent to women a dignity of character quite wanting in our present-day large class of feminine parasites, a class that has grown out of the new and easier domestic conditions and the too-great concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. That's the explanation of woman's latter-day restlessness; she's fighting against the deterioration which comes with idleness and too-easy conditions of life. She's fighting for her very life! That's what the 'feminist movement' means."
And my part in your fine scheme? asked Margaret, her face glowing with responsive enthusiasm.
As a rich and influential woman, you will countenance and patronize my school; perhaps send me your daughters; be a stock-holder in it; you can even be fitting yourself, meantime, if you like, to be a teacher in it.
But, Catherine—'rich and influential?' I? I am neither!
Catherine looked at her curiously. "What do you call 'rich,' Margaret?"
Oh, I don't know. I've never handled money in my life. I've always had everything I actually required right at my hand. I am afraid I am absurdly ignorant about money. I never had any of my own.
As Margaret spoke, she glanced up to meet in Catherine's eyes a puzzled, questioning expression which she failed to interpret.
But surely you know that Mr. Leitzel is very rich? said Catherine.
It is such a relative term. My sister's family think themselves awfully poor, but they live more comfortably and spend money more freely than the Leitzels do. Of course I understand that you Northerners are all more frugal than Southerners are, she ended vaguely.
Catherine laughed oddly. "You are an innocent!"
I'm beginning to realize that I am, nodded Margaret, feeling a something behind Catherine's tone and countenance that she did not quite get.
I might have been reared in a convent for all I've seen of life, Catherine.
Yet you've not lacked the essentials, returned Catherine with evident relief at turning the talk from the subject of money.
The essentials to what?
To making you a truly fine and charming woman. You've lived in an environment of culture, of big ideas; and you've had no sordid money cares to embitter you or blunt the sensitive fineness of your spirit.
But my life has lacked one great essential, Catherine—affection, love.
Your uncle must have loved you, dear, he must have. For you are lovable, you know. Well, rather!
He loved me as his handmaid who kept him comfortable. If ever I tried to be affectionate with him, he would act like a hyena!
If he was human, he loved you!
He wasn't human, that was it. He had all run to intellect and hadn't a vulnerable spot left.
Did you love him?
I wanted to, but he wouldn't have it. When he died, I did miss him keenly, he had grown to be a habit with me; a stimulant, too. No one could live with Uncle Osmond and not keep very much alive. So of course my life seemed suddenly very empty without him: he had been my chief care and thought for so many years. I suppose I shall never quite get over missing him. But I can't say I ever really grieved for him.
When about a half-hour later, at the end of an exhilarating and satisfying time together which put a new seal upon their friendship, the two young women parted to go to their homes, Catherine considered, as she walked slowly, to give herself time to think, how strange it was that she, as Mr. Daniel Leitzel's confidential secretary, knew so very much more about him and his affairs than did his own wife.
She actually does not know that she has married a multi-millionaire. And I don't believe it would impress her greatly to discover that she had. She is unique! For a woman like Margaret to find herself tied up with those Leitzels, oh! Catherine laughed to herself at what seemed to her the extreme absurdity of the combination. "But it is so tragic, too! Why on earth did she marry him if not for his money? Will she, I wonder, ever reach the point of telling me why she did? No," she shook her head conclusively, "not so long as she continues to live with him will any one ever hear one disloyal syllable from her, I'm sure. If she ever came to the point of rectifying by divorce the blunder she made in marrying him, for whatever mysterious reason, then perhaps she'll explain herself to me."
Catherine wondered how long it would take Margaret to find out that she was married to one of the richest men in the state.
If I ever see her inconvenienced by lack of funds, I'll enlighten her with some facts and figures known only to her husband and myself, she resolved. "Even I don't know all he has, though I do know what the public doesn't dream of."
She was aware that her employer had, before ever trusting her with any knowledge of his financial affairs, tested and proved her to be a very safe repository of his secrets.
But his wife, supposed to be one with himself and endowed with all his worldly goods, has a right to know the extent of them. If I don't supply her with any actual facts (which would, of course, roll from her like drops of mercury, leaving no least impression), I can, without treachery to Mr. Leitzel, give her to understand that her husband doesn't spend, in the course of a year, more than one thirtieth of the interest on his capital.
She doubted, however, whether even a succinct statement like that would make any difference to Margaret unless she became a mother; for Catherine believed she had succeeded, though with some difficulty, in impressing upon her friend her own theory that the divine right of motherhood ought to make a woman, by law, a full and equal partner in all her husband's "worldly goods."
I certainly did have a time persuading her that my theory is of any importance in our modern social economy. Wait until the poor child learns to know the Pennsylvania Dutch idea of woman's economic position, and until she begins to get a little acquainted with the man she has married!
She drew a long breath as she reached the front door of her "rented" home. "Well," she concluded, "my intimacy with my employer's wife promises some excitement!"
In spite of the forbearance which Margaret felt she had exercised in her desire to be scrupulously considerate of Daniel and his sisters in everything pertaining to the party, the night of this much-advertised "social event" found her in serious disfavour not only with her sisters-in-law, but with her husband himself; first, because of her persistence in ignoring their dictation as to the sort of gown she should wear; secondly, their discovery that she was taking daily walks with Miss Hamilton; for though Margaret would not stoop to any secrecy as to her relation with Daniel's secretary, yet she had not gone out of her way to publish it, and so the walks had been going on for some time before her three monitors learned of them; thirdly, the exception they had taken to her telling some callers, by whose patronage they felt honoured, that she could not afford a new set of furs! Mrs. Ocksreider had spoken admiringly of the furs she had seen Margaret wearing one day and had asked where she had bought them, and Margaret had replied that she had never bought any furs in her life; that she had always been too poor (Danny's wife admitting poverty!), and that these furs had been her grandmother's!—telling Mrs. Ocksreider, of all people, that she wore her grandmother's old clothes!
But Mrs. Ocksreider's reply had been puzzling to Jennie and Sadie:
Oh, but my dear Mrs. Leitzel, to have had a grandmother who wore sable! It ought to admit you to the D.A.R's! No wonder you flaunt them and refuse to buy new ones!
Then Margaret had further mortified them before this same formidable social leader of New Munich by refusing her invitation to join the Women's Auxiliary of the Episcopal Church, which, as Jennie and Sadie well knew, was made up of New Munich's "leading society ladies"; so what was their horror to hear Margaret reply, "It's very charitable of you to fancy that I'd be of the least use to you. But I've always hated Women's Auxiliaries!" And she said it with such a musical drawl that Mrs. Ocksreider, instead of showing how offended she must be, had laughed as though she found it funny. But the idea of saying you hated Women's Auxiliaries! It was next thing to saying that you hated the Bible! Never had Jennie and Sadie experienced such a painful half-hour as that of this call.
Fourthly, Daniel's sisters had at last discovered, through persistent prying, that his wife did not have an independent income; and Margaret, her wits sharpened by her new environment to recognize things at first unthinkable to her, saw that this discovery made Jennie and Sadie feel more free than ever to dictate to her and interfere with her liberty.
All these little episodes combining to bring upon her the displeasure of the household, the night of the party found her in a not very cheerful frame of mind, though the deep satisfaction that was hers in the great friendship that had come into her life, the most vital human relation that she had ever known, made it impossible for these smaller things to disturb her fundamentally, as otherwise they might have done.
There had been one event of that day that had somewhat brightened for her the gloom of the home atmosphere: a belated wedding-gift had come from Daniel's step-mother—a patchwork quilt—accompanied by a letter addressed to Daniel and his wife, written for the old woman by the district school teacher.
'It's a very humble present I am sending you,' Daniel had read the letter aloud at the breakfast table. "'But it's the work of my old hands, dear children, the last I'll ever do—and the love of my heart went into every stitch of it. I was so proud that you sent me such a notice of your wedding; to remember your old mother, Danny, when you were so happy yourself. I've been working on the quilt ever since I got the notice about the wedding already, and now I'd like so well to see your wife, Danny. I'll try, if I am strong enough, to take the train in, one of these days, and see you both. I'll come back the same day so as not to make any of you any extra work or trouble. I would like to see the lady you married, Danny, before I die, and give her an old woman's wishes for a happy, useful life with my good son that I am so proud of. I wish I could live long enough to see your first baby, Danny, but I guess it won't be many months any more before I must go to my long home.'"
Yes, that's always the way she talks—she 'hasn't long to live' just to work on our feelings so as to make us give her more! Jennie commented. "She has no need to come in here to see Margaret. She makes herself very bold to offer to. And she can't spare the car fare, little as what she has to go on. What's Margaret to her anyhow? And she's likely to be too feeble to get back if she comes in. Then we'd have her on our hands yet!"
But Margaret had spent an hour of the morning in writing to Mrs. Leitzel, acknowledging her gift, telling her how glad she would be to see one who had done so much for Daniel when he was a boy. For their step-mother's self-sacrificing devotion to them all in their childhood had been made known to Margaret through many an unwitting, significant remark dropped in her presence. She concluded her letter:
I am coming out to see you very soon, certainly some day next week. Daniel will bring me if he has time. If not, I'll go myself. Until then; with my heartfelt thanks for the work of your dear hands, which I shall use with pride and with grateful thoughts of you,
I am your affectionate daughter,
MARGARET BERKELEY LEITZEL.
All that day, through the constant little rasping antagonisms which Margaret, despite her good intentions, seemed unable to avert in any intercourse between herself and the Leitzels, she felt that consolatory bit of kindness and good will which had come to her from the old woman in the country. And when she stood at night with her husband and his sisters to receive their guests (Sadie in pink satine) the friendly spirit of her aged mother-in-law was with her still in the background of her consciousness, softening the light of her eyes and making human the perfunctory smile of her lips as she repeated her conventional formula of greeting over and over; so that people marvelled at the apparent continued tranquillity of this incongruously assorted household.
When later in the evening Margaret was free to move about among her guests, Daniel's cold displeasure with her was greatly modified as he witnessed again to-night, as on many previous occasions, how attractive she undoubtedly was to the men of his world. His uncannily keen little eyes read in the faces of his male guests, as they approached and talked with Margaret, the covetousness they felt for this rare possession of his. No acquisition of all his acquisitive career had ever given him a more delectable joy than his realization of the worth, in other men's eyes, of his charming wife.
Had he overheard the view of her which was ventilated, though surreptitiously, by some of the guests over their supper, his satisfaction might have been somewhat modified.
I think she's a scream! declared Myrtle Deibert to the group at her table. "Did you hear what she said to me as we were leaving the Country Club dance last Wednesday evening, when I remarked to her, 'Your husband is so awfully in love with you, Mrs. Leitzel; just see how he is beaming on you from clear across the room!' 'Scowling at me, you mean,' she corrected me. 'Don't you hear our taxicab registering out there while I linger to talk to you?"
This anecdote was met with a shout of laughter, the point of which would certainly have remained obscure to Daniel Leitzel.
Of course you all heard of her telling mother, said Miss Ocksreider, "that she hated Women's Auxiliaries? And that she wore her grandmother's old furs because she couldn't afford to buy new ones? Mother says"—she lowered her voice and the group at the table closed in a bit closer to catch her words—"that it was a perfect circus to see the consternation of Miss Jennie and Miss Sadie when she said she was poor. Isn't it queer how they are so proud of their money and yet so afraid to spend it?"
Did you hear, inquired Mrs. Eshelman, "what Mrs. Leitzel said to me last Sunday after church when I told her I'd put a five-dollar gold piece on the collection plate in mistake for a nickel and I had half a mind to ask the usher to let me have it back. 'You might as well,' she said, 'for you know the Lord won't give you credit for more than five cents.'"
She certainly does go to the ragged edge, Mr. Eshelman added his quota; "I asked her this evening whether she had been to hear the evangelist's address to Women Only, and she said no, what she wanted to hear was a talk to Men Only!"
What do you think she said to me when I told her, said Mrs. Hostetter, "what a bad boy the son of the Presbyterian pastor is. 'This proverbial badness of minister's children,' she said, 'is often, I think, just the hypocrisy of the minister breaking out.' 'But all ministers are not hypocrites,' I said to her, shocked. 'Of course, unconsciously hypocrites,' she answered. 'They don't deceive any one else as they deceive themselves.' Isn't she queer?" added Mrs. Hostetter, genuinely puzzled.
She's a peach! declared Mr. Hostetter.
Danny must think so, declared Mr. Eshelman, "to open up like this in her honour!" indicating the elaborate supper provided by the city caterer. "Terrapin, mind you, at Danny Leitzel's!"
And the 'floral decorations!' breathed Miss Deibert with an appreciative glance at the roses and palms that decorated the dining-room. "It doesn't seem possible, does it?"
This party is costing Danny something! grinned Hostetter.
And to think, said Mrs. Hostetter, "that Dan Leitzel has married a penniless bride—as she certainly gives it out that she is! It doesn't seem possible."
The power of one little woman! said Mr. Hostetter pensively. "I tell you that girl's eyes, and her voice, and her figger, and her teeth and lips, would melt any man's heart, even one of flint like Dan Leitzel's!"
That will do, Jacob! stiffly admonished Mrs. Hostetter.
Will you look at that blue glass owl on the sideboard, said Miss Ocksreider. "Wouldn't you think Mrs. Leitzel would have removed it before this party?"
She wouldn't dare! Miss Jennie thinks it's choice! responded Mrs. Eshelman. "She got it ten years ago at the ninety-nine-cent store for Danny's Christmas present, and she told me at the time that she knew it was an awful price to pay for a mere pitcher, but that they needed a handsome ornament for the top of their sideboard. No, indeed, Mrs. Leitzel wouldn't dare discard that old owl!"
How she manages to steer her way peaceably among the three members of this household! murmured Miss Deibert.
She's a wonder!
And she certainly knows how to keep her opinions to herself, said Mrs. Hostetter. "No one gets a word out of her as to what she thinks of her in-laws!"
Then she is a wonder! volunteered Hostetter.
Wouldn't I like to be her father confessor! exclaimed Miss Deibert. "I don't know what I wouldn't give for an X-ray view of her mind!"
It was a curious fact that the only person present at the Leitzels' notable party who was quite unimpressed by the expensiveness of the affair was Margaret herself.
What did impress her, as she chatted with her guests and ate her supper, was the subtlety with which one can be penetrated by the spiritual atmosphere of a given group; she felt so acutely that of this gathering to-night as compared with the fine aroma of any social collection of her Southern environment, with its old inherited simplicity and culture. She had thought, in the first weeks of her New Munich life, that the difference must be only external, for she was not only democratically disposed by nature, but the rather socialistic theories with which her uncle had imbued her inclined her to a large view of any social discrepancies.
To-night, however, it was borne in upon her that she was an alien in this company; that she could more readily find a real point of contact and sympathy with the plainest sort of day-labouring people; with, for instance, the Leitzels' cook, who was at least genuine and not pretentious, than with these people who knew no ideals except those of material possession and whose purpose in life seemed to be, on the part of the women, to outshine their acquaintances and kill time; and on that of the men to make money enough to allow the women to pursue this useful and exalted career.
People who are poor enough to be obliged to work, she spoke out her reflections to the lawyer, Henry Frantz, who happened to be sipping coffee with her, "have really purer and more wholesome views of life than—than we have" (she indicated, by a turn of her hand, the company at large). "I begin to understand, Mr. Frantz, why, in the history of nations, we see decay set in just as soon as a climax of prosperity has been reached. To survive the deadening influence of great wealth, well, it's only the fittest among nations and individuals who are strong enough to do it, isn't it?"
But it is only where there is a leisure class that we find art and culture, suggested Mr. Frantz.
The great minds and the great characters of the world, however, have never come from an environment of wealthy leisure. In our own country, has any one of our really great Presidents been educated in private schools? Nearly every citizen of eminent usefulness is a public school product.
A notable exception—your husband, he replied.
'Citizen of eminent usefulness,' she musingly experimented with her phrase. "Would Mr. Leitzel come under that head?"
He's a lawyer of state-wide, if not national, reputation, Mrs. Leitzel.
I know. Are they an eminently useful class—corporation lawyers? I merely ask for information. My ignorance on most subjects is unfathomable.
Well, we couldn't get along without them.
Corporations couldn't. But aren't we beginning to think we could get along without corporations?
Boneheads may think so. It is civilization that has built up corporations, and every time a corporation is dissolved we take a backward step in civilization.
If public utilities, said Margaret dogmatically, quoting her Uncle Osmond, "were conducted for the benefit not of corporations, but by the Government for the benefit of the whole people, we'd have a full treasury without taxing the people."
Mr. Frantz looked at her and broke into irrepressible laughter. "Excuse me, Mrs. Leitzel, but that anything looking so girlish and pretty, that anything even remotely associated with my good friend Danny Leitzel, should be giving out remarks like that—well, it's a little too much for me, you see! Did you and my friend Danny exchange views on social economics before you were married?"
We didn't have time to exchange views on anything. We knew each other just six weeks before we were married.
And have been getting acquainted since?
I'm inclined to think a six weeks' acquaintance just as good as a lifetime one for finding out what kind of a mate your lover is going to make.
Exactly. No good at all, eh?
Not much, she smiled.
I wonder, speculated Mr. Frantz, eying her curiously, "if there was ever a married pair whose ideal of each other grew higher after marriage. Think so?"
Surely. Their lives being a daily unfolding of new beauties and excellences to each other.
Oh, but I'm afraid you're a sentimentalist.
Southerners generally are, but they're saved, you know, by their unfailing sense of humour, she responded, turning from him to give some attention to the man seated on the other side of her at the little supper table.
Mrs. Leitzel's adroitness in avoiding thin ice was the despair of the gossips of New Munich.
Margaret's radiant happiness in the discovery she made on the very day after the party, that she was embarked on the wonderful passage to motherhood, fraught with its strangely mingled suffering and bliss, was somewhat tempered by the consciousness that the coming child would have to be a Leitzel; there was no escaping that catastrophe. She tried to persuade herself that the Leitzel characteristics, if properly educated, might not be so very lamentable; but her deep-down conviction that her child ran the risk of inheriting a small, mean soul gave her no little anxiety and self-reproach.
My penalty for trying to compromise with life's austerities! she grimly told herself with sad misgiving.
Her husband's joy and pride in the prospect of being a father consoled her somewhat, it was so human and normal of him; though even here the taint of greed entered in, he was so inordinately pleased that his money would not have to be left to Hiram's children.
Indeed, during the earlier weeks of her pregnancy, Margaret tried hard to keep her mind off the topics discussed in the bosom of the family, so fearful was she of the effect, upon her child, of her own recoil from the Leitzel view of life.
She found that they never would get done talking about the cost of that party; it was evidently going to occupy them for the rest of their mortal lives. The worst of it was they so insisted upon impressing it upon her.
Hiram never spent that much for a party for his Lizzie, and she brought her husband thirty thousand dollars. It ain't many husbands that would so spend for a wife that—well, don't you think, too, Margaret, that Danny's awful generous considering?
Considering what, Jennie?
Ach, Margaret, don't be so dumb! Considering you ain't got anything.
Oh, yes, I have something—youth and health and intelligence and good temper. I'm a prize. Daniel thinks so.
But you see, interposed Sadie, "our Danny could have had any of our rich town girls here."
And yet preferred me. His good taste. The only instance of it I've ever noticed.
She knew the puzzled despair of her husband's sisters over their inability to make her humbly grateful for that she, a penniless bride, had been "chosen" by their brother. But that she should fail to appreciate the expenditure for the party given in her honour was too much.
Why, Danny's bills come to three hundred dollars yet! Jennie told her with heat. "And Sadie ain't well yet from over-eating that rich supper we had that night off of the Philadelphia caterer!"
Yes, I feel it yet, said Sadie plaintively. "Just to think, Margaret, that Danny spent three hundred dollars for the party for you!"
Did he get off so easily as that? The flowers were so abundant and the supper so nice, I would have supposed they would have cost more than that, if I had thought about the cost.
Well, why didn't you think about the cost, when it was all for you?
I didn't think about it, my dears, because the cost of things doesn't interest me; I have so many more interesting things to think about. This, for instance, she said, holding up the dainty baby dress on which she had been sewing as they all sat together in the sitting-room, awaiting Daniel's coming home to his noon dinner.
But it's a wife's place to——
Daniel's entrance cut short Jennie's admonitions. The dinner-table talk, however, scarcely relieved the tension on Margaret's nerves.
Daniel was always expansive as to his business "deals" when he felt complacent, and to-day his state of mind was one of unusual satisfaction, for just before dinner Margaret had displayed to him (surreptitiously, to spare the virgin squeamishness of Jennie and Sadie) the baby things upon which she had been working, and his delight in them was like unto that of a woman. He was therefore talkative and confidential over his roast beef.
Well, Margaret, you can be proud of the way your husband upholds Christian principles in this community. I received in my morning's mail a letter from the Board of Managers of the Y.W.C.A. thanking me for the stand I took at the meeting yesterday afternoon of the stockholders of the Country Club on the question of Sunday sports. Some of the men want tennis and golf allowed on Sunday, but I stand for the sanctity of the Sabbath, and I wouldn't give in one inch. I'm the biggest stockholder of the club and they can't go against my vote in anything. I may say I rule the Country Club. One fellow, Abe Meyers, got up and declared he'd organize a new country club before he'd 'submit to the tyranny of one hidebound Pharisee!' What do you think of that? chuckled Daniel. "'The tyranny of one hidebound Pharisee!' Sour grapes, of course. He hasn't the cash or the influence to organize another club. I told them that so long as I was a member of that club, the sanctity of the Sabbath should be preserved. Golf and tennis six days of the week, but on the Sabbath, no sports; and I said I knew I had behind me the support of our Christian community. You see, Margaret, if I withdrew, the club couldn't go on."
That very fact, said Margaret, her voice rather weak, "ought, I should think, make you unwilling to impose your theories upon the other members. Noblesse oblige, you know."
But Daniel was incapable of seeing this point of view.
The evening papers, he continued, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction, "will give a full account of the meeting yesterday and publish, also, the letter of thanks sent to me by the Y.W.C.A. I handed that letter to a reporter of the Intelligencer. You'll see it in to-night's paper, Margaret."
Oh! breathed Jennie and Sadie, awe and admiration in their tones, and worship in the glances sent across the table to Daniel. "Here, Emmy," Jennie ordered the maid, "don't you see Mr. Danny's milk glass is empty? Fill it up. Do you like these pickles, Danny? They're the first I opened yet."
They're of just precisely the degree of sourness I like, Daniel nodded approvingly.
Danny's so much for sour, Jennie informed Margaret. "Yes, you took notice already, I guess, how he eats sour all the time at his meals, even up to his pie. I have to put up a lot of pickles and Chili sauce and chow-chow for him. Ain't, Danny? And he says no one's sour tastes so good to him as what mine does. I don't know what he would do," she said in consternation, "if I was taken and he couldn't have his sour any more."
There's Heinz's fifty-seven varieties, said Margaret.
Heinz! scoffed Jennie. "Our Danny eat that Heinz stuff, used as he is to good home-made sour! Well, Margaret, you don't mean to tell me you'd feed that to our Danny! I'd turn in my grave!"
I'd 'feed him' Heinz's fifty-seven varieties and tell him I'd made them myself; a plan, you see, which would make Daniel happy while it saved my time and energies for something more useful than pickles.
You'd deceive him? exclaimed Sadie, scandalized. "Tell a lie to your own husband yet!"
Is a lie ever justifiable? asked Margaret ponderously. "History and psychology answer, Yes; to the insane, the nervously distorted, and to spoiled and pampered men creatures."
Well, you'd have a hard time fooling our Danny! He ain't so easy fooled. A good thing he's got us to look after him if you wouldn't even put up sour for him!
Now I begin to see, said Margaret, "that the man, Heinz, creator of 'sour,' is a human benefactor and should have a noble monument erected to him by put-upon wives. I'll start the movement."
A stroke of luck, Daniel here broke into the dispute, "came to me to-day. You remember, Margaret, the leather store on the corner of Third and Prince streets?"
Yes.
Danny owns near that whole block, Jennie quickly informed her, though Margaret's persistent indifference to such facts was a constant irritation to her and Sadie.
I've been getting one hundred dollars a month rent for that store, Daniel stated, while his sisters listened breathlessly to such fascinating statistics. "Three months ago, George Trout, the renter, came to me and said he'd have to have more storeroom for his growing business and wanted me to extend the room back into the lot. He laid it off to me how I ought to do this for him because he had rented that room from me for the past fifteen years and had never been a day late with his rent, not even when I had suddenly and unexpectedly raised his rent two years ago from seventy-five to one hundred dollars a month; and he argued that he himself had paid for the repairs and the upkeep of his storeroom for the past eight years; that his successful leather shop had increased the value of my property; and that I certainly owed it to him to extend the floor space. Well, I simply told him that if the place was too small for him, he was perfectly welcome to move; that I certainly wouldn't incur the expense of enlarging the store when I could so easily rent it any time as it was. He argued and fussed 'round my office and said he'd been my faithful tenant for fifteen years and I had never done a thing for him and that I knew perfectly well he couldn't move his business, for there wasn't another vacant storeroom in the town in a location that wouldn't kill his business dead. Yes, I said I knew that all right. 'And,' said he, 'I absolutely require more floor space.' 'Yes, I know that, too,' I said, 'but it's no concern of mine; I have no stock in your business, Mr. Trout. I'm your landlord, and you know business is always strictly business with me. I can rent that storeroom the very hour you move out of it.' He tried to tell me again about his keeping up the repairs, but I cut that short and said he'd got my answer and now I was busy. Well, I certainly was amused to see how mad he looked as he flung himself out of my office. But," said Daniel, his eyes narrowing to the look of cunning from which Margaret was learning to wince as from a touch on a bared nerve, "the affair has turned out just as I foresaw it would! That's the secret of my success, Margaret, as Jennie and Sadie can tell you. I look at every proposition, no matter how small a one, to find in it the main chance—the chance for me. I saw there'd be only one thing for Trout to do: enlarge the store at his own expense. No more than right that he should. No least reason why I should do it."
Of course not! exclaimed Jennie and Sadie in one breath, while Margaret, looking rather wan, did not raise her eyes from her plate, for the self-complacency of her husband's countenance, as he told his yarn, was more than she could stand.
So, last week, Daniel went on, "when the changes in the storeroom were completed, I went in and took a look around. Trout spent about eight hundred dollars on the job. Of course this enlargement increases the value of the property and demands higher rent. So, yesterday," Daniel smiled, "I notified him that his rent was raised twenty-five dollars a month. He came storming into my office and said the bills for the repairs should be sent to me. I pointed out to him that I couldn't be held legally responsible for them, as I had not had them made; and that he could take his choice: pay the increased rent or get out. Well, you see, there was nothing else for him to do but pay the higher rent. Anything else spelt ruin for him. He knew that as well as I did. He had to swallow the pill," grinned Daniel, "though it did go down hard! Yes, that's the way I turn things, even little things, right around to my profit, Margaret. Pretty cute, isn't it?"
If I were Mr. Trout, Margaret returned, looking white, "I'd set fire to your damned store and burn it to the ground!"
There was an instant's silent, awful consternation, when Margaret suddenly laid down her napkin and rushed from the room, every nerve in her sick and quivering with the physical and moral disgust she felt.
Margaret suddenly laid down her napkin and rushed from the room, every nerve in her sick and quivering with the physical and moral disgust she felt
Margaret suddenly laid down her napkin and rushed from the room, every nerve in her sick and quivering with the physical and moral disgust she felt
When before returning to his office Daniel went to their bedroom, where Margaret, weak and despairing, lay prone upon the bed, he found the door locked against him.
I insist upon coming in, Margaret!
Go away! she faintly called.
Open the door! he commanded.
I won't! I can't! I don't dare to! I'm dangerous! Go away from me!
Get up and open this door!
If I did, I'd—I'd scratch you! Keep away from me!
Daniel telephoned for the doctor.
My gracious! exclaimed Jennie, as they all awaited the coming of the physician in the sitting-room, "Hiram's Lizzie never carried on like this when she was expecting!"
No, she certainly didn't, echoed Sadie; "for all she might have had a little more right to; while Margaret, here, coming to Danny without nothing at all, up and sasses him like what she did at dinner yet! Don't it wonder you?"
Daniel, lounging in his own big chair before the fire, pouted like a thwarted, spoiled child.
What got into her, anyhow, to act so hystericky all of a sudden? Sadie speculated.
Saying she'd set fire to Danny's store! exclaimed Jennie indignantly. "And swearing yet! My gracious!"
It certainly does, now, beat all! said Sadie mournfully.
I certainly didn't think she'd turn out like this! scolded Jennie. "You hadn't ought to have picked out a wife, Danny, without me looking her over for you first."
I can't do anything with her! snapped Daniel spitefully. "Nothing I can say will make her stop running with Catherine Hamilton. She tells me to my face she won't give her up. And she won't, either!"
Och, Danny, I wouldn't take it off of her! said Jennie harshly.
Well, what can a man do? he fretfully demanded.
Discharge Miss Hamilton.
She's invaluable to me. She's in my confidence in a business way. I can't discharge her. It wouldn't matter to her anyway. Every lawyer in town that has any practice would like to employ her. What I'm afraid of is that she'll resign. Oh, if she were afraid of losing her job, then I could easily fix Margaret!
It looks, Danny, as if Margaret took up with your clerk just to spite and worry you; for what else would she run with her for?
Well, if you'd hear them talking together once! Daniel sullenly responded.
Well, if we did? questioned Jennie curiously.
You wouldn't understand a word they were saying! snapped her brother.
Do they talk so dumb? asked Sadie wonderingly.
They seem to think it means something—the stuff they get off to each other!
It certainly does spite me, Danny, said Jennie with sympathetic indignation, "to have your wife use you like this! And when I think how you could have married most anybody!"
Here comes the doctor, announced Sadie. "Supposing she won't leave him in her room?"
Och, but that would make talk! exclaimed Jennie. "I'll go up and tell her she has to open!"
Margaret, meantime, her sudden gust of passion subsided, realized how foolishly she was acting.
I can't say I didn't marry him with my eyes open, she prodded herself. "I have no right to scorn him and fly out at him. I see that well enough, alas! I owe him everything I can reasonably give him to make up for my lack of love."
Her sense of her obligation to Daniel did not, however, and never could, include the denial of such fundamental principles as her friendship with Catherine Hamilton, or her own personal freedom in so far as it did not clash with his just rights.
Margaret was not so stupid as to suppose for a moment that she could, by any utmost effort on her part, lead Daniel to see a case like that of George Trout's store rent as she saw it. That he could flaunt and boast of such "deals" proved him too hopelessly obsessed.
If he were ashamed of it and tried to hide it, there might be some hope of redeeming him. As it is, I certainly shan't waste myself in any such futile endeavour. But if I outlive Daniel, I shall pay to George Trout or his heirs that eight hundred dollars on the very day that I get possession of my widow's third. Or, if I have a son, he shall discharge that debt!
However, by the time Jennie knocked on her door demanding admission for the doctor, she was in a sufficiently chastened frame of mind to receive both him and her husband with all the outward semblance of a dutifully happy wife.
Accustomed as Margaret was to the Southern ideal of the chivalry due to a pregnant wife; reared in a state where a fundamental principle of marriage is that the husband's share in the burden and sacrifice of bringing a child into being shall consist in cherishing the mother of his child with reverence and tenderness, so that her difficult ordeal be made as bearable as unselfish love can make it, and that she be upheld throughout her trial by the man's strength and devotion; and that the husband who did not so regard his wife was a cur to be horsewhipped—Margaret had to learn, during her weary, waiting months, that this attitude of the Southern gentleman would have seemed to the average Pennsylvania German ridiculous sentimentality, his view being that woman was created, in the Providence of God, to be a breeder and that was all there was to it; that in merely fulfilling her natural function she was in no more need of sympathy or help or compassion than a cow in the same condition; that her inclination during pregnancy to tears, tantrums, fretfulness, indolence, a muddy complexion, a phlegmatic indifference to everything except the making of baby clothes, not even her husband getting, at this time, any consideration to speak of at her hands—these things were recognized by him as burdens to be borne either with stoicism, or, for the sake of the child, peremptorily prohibited.
So, it was a matter of wonder to Margaret, rather than of distress, that Daniel should be so extremely moderate in his expression of concern or sympathy for her condition. So used as he was to being taken care of by his sisters, it would have been a wholly unnatural attitude on his part, she saw, to be actively solicitous for a woman. He would have felt he lowered his dignity and made himself absurd if he had put himself out for her comfort in the many little ways he might have done and which she had at first looked to see him do.
But, as Daniel told her one day when she expressed some of the wonder she felt at his lack of chivalry toward her, he had never seen Hiram bother about Lizzie when she was in that condition, and it was after all only Nature.
A baby's teething is only Nature, but we help and comfort it, don't we? I did expect you'd get a little bit excited over my health! It would all be so much easier to bear, she spoke rather to herself than to him, knowing his impenetrability, "if one were treated as a woman!"
As a woman? Daniel inquired, puzzled.
Yes, instead of as a cow.
A cow?
Treated as a Southerner treats a woman.
Now I should think, was Daniel's complacent reply, "that when a husband acts toward his wife as I saw your brother-in-law act toward your sister, like a butler or a porter, she wouldn't respect him."
The medi?val peasant idea that if her husband doesn't beat her, he doesn't love her, said Margaret.
But the dreariness of mind Daniel's attitude caused her she, with a sort of medi?val superstition, almost welcomed as being at least some expiation for the sin of her loveless marriage.
Margaret was disappointed to find, as the days passed over her head, that because of her inability to ride on the cars without great physical distress, she was obliged to postpone the promised visit to her mother-in-law; and at last, when her appearance made the little trip no longer possible, she wrote to Mrs. Leitzel and explained the reason for her not keeping her promise.
But just as soon as your grandchild is able to travel, she concluded her letter, "I shall bring it (not knowing its gender) out to see you."
It seemed to Margaret that, unaggressive though she was, the weeks before her confinement were constantly marked by contentions, apparently inevitable, between her and Daniel about the many things of life which they viewed from diametrically opposed standpoints. Her monthly account of her expenditures with her ten dollars allowance was one of these points of difference. The first time Daniel asked her to produce the little account book he had given her she took it from her desk, scribbled a few words in it, and cheerfully handed it to him, and he read on one page, "Daniel gave me ten dollars," and on the opposite page, "All spent. Balances exactly."
Daniel looked up from the book inquiringly.
That's as much of an account as you'll ever get from me, Daniel, as to what I did with ten dollars in a whole month! Did you actually suppose I'd give you the items, like a little school-girl?
And no amount of persuasion, or of fretting and fuming on his part, could induce her to submit to him an itemized account of her allowance.
Her South Carolina property was another bone of contention.
I can't get a word from that brother-in-law of yours in reply to my letter to him! Daniel complained one September evening when they were alone in their bedroom just after supper, Margaret, in a pink silk negligé, lying on a couch at the foot of the bed and Daniel seated in an armchair beside her. "The slipshod business ways of those Southerners! What does the man mean?"
He's such a procrastinator! I must admit Walter's rather lazy. Clever, though. He's considered a mighty intelligent lawyer.
A clever lawyer has some sense of business, which he does not seem to have!
Don't you be so sure of that!
What do you mean?
Oh, nothing.
Well, he does seem to have enough sense of business about him to defraud you out of what belongs to you! snapped Daniel.
Walter is an honourable gentleman, Margaret quietly affirmed, "with a sense of honour, Daniel, that to you would be as incomprehensible as a Sanscrit manuscript, or a page of Henry James."
The quixotic 'sense of honour' of a South Carolinian! scoffed Daniel. "Oh, I know all about that. Impracticable moonshine! Nothing in it, Margaret. Has no market value."
No, thank God, it has no market value.
You're a little simpleton, my dear, about 'values' of any kind, and I wish you wouldn't swear!
Can't one thank God except in church and at the vulgar hour of feeding?
Be reverent! Daniel, looking shocked, reproved her. "And I don't see where his sense of honour comes in in his behaviour as to your property!"
Don't bother about my property, Daniel, Margaret wearily advised. "It's not worth bothering about."
It's all you have, though, Daniel ruefully retorted.
Margaret offered no reply to this.
I want you to write to Walter, Margaret, and see whether you can get an answer out of him.
What about?
What about? Haven't I just been telling you? You write and demand of him why I receive no answer from him to my repeated inquiries as to your property.
But I have told you all there is to know about it, Daniel.
Margaret, Daniel patiently answered, "I have already explained to you how I can make that estate yield you a handsome income."
By depriving my sister of a home? No, thank you.
Naturally your sister would also profit by what I would do for the estate.
Profit at your expense? Not if you could help it, Daniel.
Daniel laughed appreciatively at this flattering tribute to his business acumen.
I think I see, Daniel, how you would manage the 'deal.' You'd improve the estate, rent it at a high figure, and keep the rent (at least my share, if not my sister's) to pay you for what you had spent.
Pretty good, my dear! You have some business cleverness yourself, I see, after all! Sufficient, at any rate, to recognize that you ought to be getting your share of your uncle's bequest. Just inform your brother-in-law, in your letter, that you are going to sign over to me the power of attorney to manage your affairs. That will bring him to time and fetch an answer!
But I'm not.
Not what?
Not going to sign away any 'power' I may have. I didn't know I had any. It's a pleasant surprise. I shall certainly hold on to it. I need it, whatever it is.
Without power of attorney to act for you, Margaret, I can't help you. You'll have to give it to me, said Daniel firmly. "I'll bring up a paper from the office on Monday and Jennie and Sadie will witness your signature. Can't you get up and write to Walter now? I'll dictate the letter."
I wouldn't rise from this comfortable couch, Daniel, if the house were on fire.
It's very bad, very bad indeed, I'm sure, for you to lie about so much.
If you were carrying a weight of several tons, I guess you wouldn't be on your feet when you didn't have to.
'Several tons?' That's a gross exaggeration, Margaret.
I never was strong on figures or statistics, Margaret admitted.
Won't you try to get up and write the letter? I very much wish you to, urged Daniel, still quite unable to credit the fact which in these days frequently confronted him, that any feminine member of his household could fail to jump at his least bidding.
What do you want me to write? Margaret parried.
Great heavens! Daniel cried, exasperated. "I've told you only about a dozen times!"
A dozen? A gross exaggeration, I'm sure. And to call upon the heavens is irreverent. There, there, I won't tease you, she patted his hand; and he immediately clasped and held it, for he still adored her. "But as I've told you, Daniel, that I won't sign over to you the power of attorney, there's nothing to write to Walter about."
Is this your idea of not 'teasing' me? I've said that without the power of attorney, I can't help you.
I don't want that kind of help, my dear, thank you very much.
Will you write the letter before I go to the office to-morrow morning?
Telling Walter I'm not signing over to you the power of attorney? Is that necessary?
Very well, Margaret. Daniel rose with dignity and turned away from her. "I'll dictate to my stenographer what I wish you to say to Walter and I'll bring the letter up from the office for your signature."
Daniel! Margaret suddenly exclaimed at mention of his stenographer.
He turned about and looked at her.
Did you give Catherine the note I sent her this morning?
I certainly did not.
Why not?
You ask me to play the messenger boy to my own clerk! I read your silly note, my dear, and burned it.
Margaret, sinking a bit lower among the cushions of the couch, did not trust herself to answer.
Now, my dear, said Daniel, "since you can no longer go out, you can take advantage of the chance that fact gives you, to drop this unseemly intimacy, which no doubt by this time you find burdensome enough, especially as you have seen how exceedingly annoying it is to my sisters and to me. We are willing to overlook your having flouted our wishes if you'll now——"
Has Miss Hamilton been to see me and been turned away? demanded Margaret, who for the past two weeks had neither seen nor heard a word from her friend, her notes and telephone calls having both failed to bring any response. She had been deeply wounded and worried at Catherine's seeming unfaithfulness to her in her time of dire need; and she had suffered keenly from the deadly loneliness that had engulfed her; for she had, through almost daily association for many weeks, become so deeply bound to Catherine that she felt she could never again know happiness if she lost her. While she had indeed suspected that some treachery on the part of the Leitzels was keeping Catherine away, yet she did not understand how her friend could possibly have failed to receive at least some of the communications she had sent to her; letters which she would have supposed must bring Catherine to her side, if she had to storm the house to get there.
Have your sisters sent my friend away when she came to see me and kept it from me that she was here? Margaret repeated in a tone so quiet that Daniel never suspected the volcano it covered.
She has been told by Jennie every time she called that you wished to be excused. This unseemly intimacy is to cease! You will have to understand, Margaret, that I am not a man to be trifled with by a mere woman—a mere girl, I might say!
Brave and manly of you, Daniel, certainly.
If you don't watch out, you will be the cause of my losing the most valuable clerk in New Munich and one to whom I have confided important private business matters, for, if I must, I shall tell her straight that I object to her running after my wife!
Oh!
I have already hinted to her that you are at last coming to your senses and getting over your silly infatuation for her. I intimated to her that it was only your appreciation of her valuable services to me which had led you to be very nice and friendly to her.
Do you suppose for an instant, Daniel, that she was idiot enough to believe that?
Why shouldn't she believe it?
Because she knows me—and she also knows you.
But though Margaret assured herself many times in the course of the wakeful, restless night which followed that Catherine would not believe Daniel's absurd story nor let the family attitude toward her come between them, she really suffered an agony of doubt and fear lest the friendship so precious to her should not be able to stand under the pressure brought to bear upon it.
Surely Catherine will think I am asking too much of her, to expect her to stick to me through all this! But oh! I can't give her up, I can't! I will not let them separate us!
The next morning, as soon as Daniel had left the house for his office, she hurried to the telephone and called up Miss Hamilton, knowing that her only chance of getting Catherine was when Daniel was not in his office. She actually trembled with apprehension for fear she should be told that Miss Hamilton had not yet reached the office. But to her joy it was Catherine's own voice that answered her.
Oh, Catherine! It's Margaret! Catherine, listen! I've been wanting you so! I didn't know why you didn't come, and I only learned last night. Catherine, I'm coming right down to the office, now, in a taxicab, and I want you to come out with me for an hour, for I must see you to straighten things out. Tell the powers that be that you've a headache or small-pox symptoms or something and just come. Will you?
I will, dear. I'll leave a note on my desk and walk out now, and meet you at the door when you get here.
I'll be as quick as I can.
She hung up the receiver. But just as she was going to lift it again, to call the taxicab office, her eyes fell upon Jennie and Sadie congregated a few feet away from her, Sadie staring at her in consternation and Jennie in wrath and indignation.
Margaret! Jennie suddenly came to her and forcibly pushed her from the telephone. "You ain't to call a taxicab, so you ain't, Margaret! Our Danny ain't to be spited so when I'm close by!"
Very well, answered Margaret coolly, "I'll go next door and use Mrs. Kaufman's telephone."
But, gasped Sadie, "that'll make talk yet!"
Margaret, not replying, started for the door.
Margaret! cried Jennie sharply, hurrying after her and catching her arm, "how that'll look yet—you going into the neighbours' to 'phone! You darsent go round to our neighbours' making talk!" she commanded. "I won't leave you do it.'"
Then will you let me use the telephone here?
No, I won't, not for no such a purpose—to go down to see our Danny's clerk when he don't give you dare to. You're near worrying my poor brother to death with the way you act!
Please let go my arm, Jennie.
You pass me your promise, then, that you'll behave yourself. You're all the time raising excitements in our peaceful home that gives Sadie the indigestion!
Margaret wrenched herself free and went to the front door; but Jennie got there first, turned the key and removed it from the lock.
I ain't leaving you disgrace us with our neighbours! she indignantly affirmed.
Margaret, looking white but resolute, went to a side window, raised it, and called into the Kaufmans' dining-room where the family was then breakfasting, while Jennie and Sadie, foiled, but horrified and incredulous of her audacity, fell back.
Will you please be so very kind, Mrs. Kaufman, Margaret called across the space between the two windows, when Mrs. Kaufman had raised hers, "as to 'phone for a taxicab for me at once. I have to hurry down to Mr. Leitzel's office. I shall be so much obliged, and I'm very sorry to trouble you at breakfast."
We're just done, Mrs. Leitzel, and I'll be very glad to oblige you. Nothing wrong, I hope?
No, but I must get to the office as quickly as I can. Will you please tell them to hurry with the taxicab, Mrs. Kaufman?
Yes, of course I will—don't mention it! Your telephone out of order?
I can't use it, said Margaret, and with a nod and a smile, she closed the window.
She turned slowly and looked at her sisters-in-law. They, almost leaning upon each other for support, were regarding her as though she were a dangerous lunatic. Without a word, she went past them and upstairs to get her wraps. When she came down five minutes later the taxicab was at the door and Jennie was at the 'phone calling up Daniel's office.
Margaret found, however, that the front door was now unlocked. They evidently felt too uncertain of her to try her any further.
Margaret wondered whether, if Jennie succeeded in warning Daniel of her coming, he would again contrive to prevent Catherine's seeing her.
Wouldn't it make a good Movie! I might have it copyrighted! she shrugged.
But she told the chauffeur to hurry, hoping that she might, even yet, get to the office before Daniel got there.
If I don't, and if he tries to keep Catherine from coming down to me—well, if I didn't look such a sight, I would go right up into the office!
When, however, the taxicab drew up before the building of which the second floor was occupied by Daniel's law offices, and she leaned for an instant out of the cab window, she saw her husband coming down the street. Jennie, then, had been too early for him. Margaret looked about hastily for Catherine, but she saw nothing of her. She shrank far back, then, in the cab to prevent Daniel's seeing her, for he was now close by.
She saw him hesitate at the door of the building and glance inquiringly at the cab; then, curiosity moving him, for Daniel had the petty curiosity of an unoccupied woman, he came over to the curb and looked into the window of the cab.
Margaret met his glance calmly. All she cared about was that he should not prevent her meeting Catherine.
Why, Margaret! You out of doors! What for? You came for me? Is anything wrong?
I came out for some fresh air.
But to come out on the street! he protested, scandalized.
I'm not exposed to view.
But the chauffeur has seen you! whispered Daniel, actually colouring with embarrassment.
He doesn't mind it nearly as much as you do, Daniel. I think he'll recover; he looks robust.
But what have you come down to my office for?
As Margaret at this moment saw Catherine coming out of the building, she promptly answered, "To see Miss Hamilton and clear matters up with her. Here she is now."
Daniel turned about sharply, and Catherine, nodding a cheerful good-morning to him, stepped into the cab and bent over Margaret to kiss her.
But, Miss Hamilton, cried Daniel as his clerk settled Herself comfortably beside his wife, "why are you not at your desk?"
I left a note on your desk, Mr. Leitzel, asking you to excuse me for an hour. I shall be back before ten, she replied, drawing the cab door shut and speaking to him through the open window.
To the park, Margaret ordered the chauffeur. "Good-bye, Daniel."
Miss Hamilton, faltered Daniel, but before he could collect his wits to decide how he ought to meet so unprecedented a situation, the car started and whirled down the street.
Slowly and thoughtfully he turned into his office building. Never before in all his life had his will been so frustrated as by this young wife of his hearth and home upon whom he showered every comfort, every luxury and indulgence. That any one whom he supported should disobey, defy, and thwart him! It was beyond belief. How did she dare to do it?
But what's a man to do with a wife who doesn't care for his displeasure any more than if he were an old cat! he raged. "Oh, well," he tried to console himself, "it won't be long, now, until the baby comes, and then surely she'll be different. She'll have to be! I'll find some means of teaching her that my wishes can't be disregarded!"
Miss Hamilton's note which he found on his desk stated succinctly that she had an imperative engagement this morning which would make her an hour late.
Daniel, sinking limply into his desk-chair, crushed the note in his long, thin fingers and tossed it into his waste-basket, with the murderous wish that it was his clerk's head he was smashing.
What will they be when they get the vote? he groaned. "Women," he said spitefully but epigrammatically, "are the pest of men's lives!"
Margaret, meantime, without once directly referring to her husband and his sisters, had managed to convey to Catherine an explanation of the silence and desolation that had existed between them during the past two weeks; and she was now making a compact with her which she felt must insure them both against any future misunderstanding.
Tell me first, Catherine, that our friendship means more to you than—than any petty considerations! Please, Catherine, tell me that it does! For I just must have you, you know! You are more to me than I can possibly be to you, for you have your mother, while I——
She hesitated and Catherine said, "And you, Margaret, will soon have your child. Will that make you need me any less? I don't believe it will, dear. And my other dear ones can't in the least fill your place in my life. I can't give you up any more than you can spare me. Nothing," she said with decision, "shall separate us."
Then, said Margaret, pressing Catherine's hand, "hereafter, when you come to see me, ring the bell four times by twos, and I, knowing about the hour to look for you, will be on hand to let you in myself."
All right. I will.
Catherine! You are large-minded!
My dear! protested Catherine, "'large-minded' to be indifferent to the eccentricities of—well," she closed her lips on the rest of her sentence, "two illiterate, vulgar old women," was what she had nearly said; but she left it to Margaret's imagination to finish her remark.
While you are ill in bed, I suppose I shan't be able to get near you, she ventured. "It will be dreadful if I have to wait nearly a month before I can see that baby! It's going to be awfully dear to me, Margaret! Next thing to having one of my own."
I couldn't wait a whole month to show it to you. I'll ask the doctor to bring you to me.
We'll manage somehow, affirmed Catherine.
Margaret, looking rather pale, did not answer, and Catherine suddenly put her arms about her and kissed her.
You poor child! she said tenderly.
I'm not a good fighter, Margaret sadly shook her head. "And there are so many, many adjustments to be made, I——"
She stopped short and bit her lips to keep back the tears that sprang to her eyes.
At least, said Catherine encouragingly, "you seem to be coming to your ordeal, dear, with plenty of courage; and that's the main thing just now."
Oh, Catherine, I'm willing to go through a lot for the sake of holding a baby of my own to my heart!
Then you think, Margaret, that motherhood is going to be all that it's cracked up to be?
Under ideal conditions, said Margaret, "I can see nothing greater to be desired."
But do the ideal conditions ever exist?
I suppose they seldom do.
Sometimes I've had my doubts, said Catherine. "The male poets and painters exalt the beauty, the holiness of motherhood, and the women bear the burden and pain of it."
But when women whose lives have had the largest horizon—women like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Margaret Fuller—have declared that their motherhood was the crown and climax of all their experiences of life, I suppose the poets and painters are not very wrong about it, Catherine.
I hope they are not, since all my instincts about it are entirely primitive and I feel that nothing in the world will compensate me if I've got to go through life childless.
There would be one compensation, said Margaret earnestly.
What?
Sometimes, since I've known I was going to have a child, the responsibility, the almost crushing responsibility, has seemed more than I could bear. That's what I meant when I spoke of ideal conditions.
Catherine held back her mental reply to this, which was, "Yes, we should be careful whom we marry, and why did you tie up with a little rat like Danny Leitzel?"
What she did say was: "You didn't feel this crushing sense of responsibility until after you found yourself pregnant?"
No. Before that I thought only of my own happiness in having a baby to cherish. But, Catherine, when we look about us and see what life can do to us, I wonder how we ever dare, under any conditions, to bring a child into this awful world!
We can't question the foundations of the universe, however.
No, but we can question modern civilization, which produces a huge population of criminals, lunatics, degenerates, and incapables.
Think of pleasant things, my dear!
I try to. To tell you the truth, in spite of my heavy sense of responsibility, I can hardly wait, Catherine, until I have my baby! I want to show you the lovely little embroidered dress Harriet sent me. Will you come in to see it and me this afternoon after four o'clock?
Yes.
I'll be on the watch.
All right, Catherine nodded.
The baby received another present, the other day, which touched me very much, added Margaret. "A cunning pair of socks from its grandmother which she knit herself."
Its grandmother? But——
I mean Mr. Leitzel's step-mother.
Oh!
Did you ever happen to see her, Catherine?
Once. She came to the office once to see Mr. Leitzel.
Catherine's tone of withdrawal, as though she feared to be questioned, piqued Margaret's interest.
What was your impression of her?
Margaret, your husband's mother has an unforgettable face! There's a benediction in it, such sweetness, refinement, and simplicity shine in her countenance. When she had talked to me for a while, I felt as a good Catholic must who has been blessed by the Pope. Just the sort of person (with a heart too tender to hurt a fly) to be herself easily victimized by the human vultures that prey upon the too confiding.
Has anybody victimized her? Margaret casually inquired.
Catherine hesitated an instant before she answered: "Righteousness is sometimes a breastplate to protect the otherwise defenceless. It is that dear old woman's extraordinary conscientiousness that has saved her from being entirely devoured by the vultures, though she has certainly been gnawed at pretty hard. I can't explain to you, now, just what I mean. Some day, perhaps."
Oh, do tell me, Catherine.
Again Catherine hesitated before she replied: "She made a certain promise to her husband on his deathbed which her conscience has never allowed her to break, though she has always believed that she was acting against her own interests in keeping it. But it's her loyalty to her promise that's been her breastplate; that has saved her from the vultures."
Margaret considered in silence this suggestive bit of information. It was rather more lucid to her than Catherine suspected. But she was impressed with the sudden realization she had of her friend's intimate knowledge of Daniel's affairs and it flashed upon her that perhaps his seemingly unreasonable objections to their intimacy might have quite another explanation than that he had given it.
In this, however, she was mistaken. Daniel entirely trusted the discretion of his clerk. Not so much because he believed her bound in honour to keep his secrets as because it was the part of a first-class clerk (which she was) to be discreetly silent as to her employer's business operations.
And now, my dear, Catherine broke in on her thoughts, "since we've threshed things out and have made a compact that we will not again misunderstand each other, I think I'd better get back to my 'job.'"
Margaret gave the order to the chauffeur; and when a little while later, alone in the taxicab on her way home, she found her heart overflowing with a sense of the fulness, the richness of life, and considered how strenuously Daniel and his sisters tried to take from her the comfort, the happiness, of companionship with Catherine and how impossible it would be to make them see what that companionship meant to her, she felt greatly strengthened in her resolve to resist, steadily and persistently, their aggressions upon her personal liberty.
At her own door, as she opened her purse to pay for the cab, she found she had remaining of her monthly allowance only two dollars and the chauffeur's price was three dollars. She hesitated an instant, then telling the man to charge the cab to Mr. Leitzel, she got out hastily and went indoors.
Rather hard on Daniel to make him pay the costs of my plots gotten up to circumvent his plots! He won't like it. Ah, I've a bright idea! I'll tell him to deduct the three dollars from my next 'allowance.' That will appease him.
But on second thoughts she realized that that same bright idea would surely occur to Daniel without any suggestion from her.