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.