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.
[Illustration: 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.