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.