Margaret felt an impersonal curiosity as to what Daniel would say to
her when he came home to his dinner at noon. Jennie and Sadie were
also curious as to that. But Daniel himself was curious, too. How
_was_ a husband to meet such unnatural behaviour in a wife? Did other
men's wives so disregard their husbands' wishes and commands? If women
got much more independent it would break up the holy estate of
matrimony altogether.
He finally decided, on his homeward walk, that about the only course
open to him was to take refuge in a dignified silence, though now that
Margaret's time was drawing near, he felt sufficiently apprehensive of
the outcome to be very leniently inclined toward her. Funny how he
cared for her when she treated him the way she did! He could not help
it, somehow. She certainly had a way with her! Well, when she was
over her trial and quite herself again, he'd have another try at
bringing her to a proper sense of the confederation to which he was
accustomed and which was his due.
He wondered uneasily what the people of the town thought of this
incongruous intimacy between his clerk and his wife. It certainly
passed his comprehension as much as it did that of his sisters that a
girl as "high-toned" as Margaret was should insist upon being intimate
with his stenographer. That Miss Hamilton was equally "high-toned," he
was incapable of recognizing. Jennie had voiced his own sentiments
when a few days before she had exclaimed, "When she _could_ run with
_any_body, she goes and picks out an office clerk! It's nothing else,
Danny, but that she's bound to act con_tra_ry, to show us she don't
care if she _didn't_ bring you a dollar to her name!"
However, a letter which he found on the hall table when he reached home
diverted not only his own attention, but that of the whole household,
from Margaret's case.
It was from the school teacher of Martz Township, who wrote in behalf
of his step-mother; and after dinner, as the family sat together, as
was their custom, in the sitting-room, for an hour before Daniel went
again to his office--Jennie and Sadie fussing about him to make him
comfortable, adjusting the window-blind, placing his chair, handing him
the newspaper, retying his necktie, brushing his coat collar--Daniel
presently opened and read the letter he had received.
Margaret listened to it and to the lengthy discussion which followed
with an attention that was to bear early and abundant fruit.
"DEAR FRIEND:
"I am writing for Mrs. Leitzel, to leave you know she had it so bad in
her lungs here the past couple weeks the neighbours thought it would
give pneumonia, but she got better and now she's up again, but very
weak, and I'm leaving you know that we think she ought not to live
alone a half a mile away from her nearest neighbour, because if she got
so sick that she couldn't help herself, she might die before her
neighbours found it out yet that she needed help. And she's too feeble
any more to make up her fires and fetch her water from the spring and
chop her wood. The house not having any modern improvements, and so
much out of repair, it makes it harder, too, for such an old woman.
And she has hardly anything to live on. The neighbours say she had
either ought to have some one with her, or you ought to take her to
your home to live. If not, she'll have to go the poorhouse, and that
of course you would not want, either.
"She is better now and says to tell you not to worry, but I warn you
she may get down sick again any time, as old as what she is. And I
think you have got good cause to worry, though I told her I'd tell you
not to. If it hadn't been for the neighbours doing for her this last
couple weeks, she'd have died.
"Yours truly,
"MAYBELLE RAUCH.
"P.S. She says she sends her love to all and that you have got no need
to worry."
But Daniel and his sisters did seem to think they had "need to worry"
very much, at the startling revelations of this letter, not the
revelations as to their step-mother's sufferings and needs, but as to
the neighbourhood publicity given to their neglect of her.
"To think she'd go and have that busybody teacher and all her other
neighbours in and complain to 'em all like this, so's they write to us
yet and ask for help for her! Well, this beats all! She never went
_this_ far before!" scolded Jennie.
"Yes, I don't see why she couldn't leave us know herself if she's got
any complaints, and not put it out to the whole township like this!"
Sadie worried.
"It certainly will make talk out there!" Daniel frowned.
"Enough to get into the newspapers if she doesn't watch out!"
"But how," Margaret ventured a question, "could she let you know except
in the way she's taking, since she can't write herself? And how could
she help having the neighbours in if she was ill and helpless and
alone?"
"She could anyhow have sent us a postal card to say she was sick and
wanted one of us to come out," said Jennie.
"Would you have gone to her?"
"Of course one of us would have gone."
"Maybe she couldn't even write a postal card, or get out to mail it if
she did write it, if she's so old and feeble, and was ill."
"If that was the case," said Daniel, "then to avoid a repetition of the
occurrence, I don't see what else we are to do but put her into a home."
"You know how she's against that, Danny," said Jennie. "If you decide
to do it, you'll have a time with her! And those neighbours all taking
her part!"
"This impertinent teacher," said Daniel, tapping the letter he held,
"has the face to reproach us, you notice, for not keeping the place in
repair! It wasn't our business to keep it in repair when we never get
any rent for it."
"Yes, it does seem as if Mom might have kept it in repair when she was
getting it rent free," said Jennie. "_I_ don't see why she has not
been able to save something in all these years from what she's earnt
from her vegetable garden."
"She certainly hasn't managed good," said Sadie.
"And to think of the cheek of those neighbours!" said Jennie
wrathfully. "Saying we had ought to take her in here to live with us
yet! As if she was our own flesh and blood!"
"What would _Hiram_ say to something like this coming!" Sadie
speculated; "when _he_ thinks we did too much in not charging her rent."
"Well," Daniel suddenly announced with a magnanimous air that seemed to
swell his chest, "I'll send her a check. I'll send her five dollars.
Maybe I'll make it ten."
"Ten dollars yet, Danny!" said Sadie, regarding her brother with
affectionate admiration.
"I'm not sure I'll send as much as ten. But anyhow five."
"She'll be sure to show the check around to prove to those neighbours
how good you are to her."
"And there will be some among them," said Daniel indignantly, "that
will be ready enough to call it stingy!"
"Oh, well, some folks would say it was stingy if you sent her
twenty-five dollars yet!"
"If you and Sadie want to put a little to what I send," Daniel
tentatively suggested, "we might make it ten or fifteen."
"Well," said Jennie reluctantly, "it _ain't_ fair for you to pay all,
either. What do you say, Sadie?"
"Well," Sadie hesitatingly agreed; "for all, I did want to get a new
fancy for my white hat. How much will you give, Jennie?"
"Well, if you and I each give two-fifty to Danny's five or ten, _that_
ought to stop her neighbours' talking out there."
"All right," Sadie pensively agreed.
"No use asking Hiram to contribute," Daniel growled, "when he thinks we
ought to charge her rent for the place. He gets angry whenever he
hears I gave her a little. I told him once, 'If I can better afford
than you can to give her a little, and I don't ask you to help out,
what are you kicking about?' 'It's the principle of it,' he said. 'If
you give her money, it's admitting you owe it to her, or you wouldn't
give it to her. Now I contend that we don't owe her anything.' 'Well,
then,' I said, 'when I give her a little now and then, I'll put it down
on my accounts under Christian Charities. Will that satisfy you?' But
no, even that didn't satisfy him. He's all for putting her to a home.
And it looks now as if that's what we'll have to do pretty soon,"
Daniel concluded, rising to go to his office.
Margaret looked on in silence as Jennie and Sadie each counted out
carefully from their purses two dollars and a half and passed it over
to their brother.
"I'll send a check, then, to mother for fifteen dollars," he said as he
put the money into his own purse. "I'll make it fifteen," he nodded.
"I'm willing to make it fifteen. That will certainly settle the
gossips out there and keep her going for a while comfortably."
He came across the room to Margaret's chair by the window.
"Good-bye, my dear," he said, bending to kiss her; and it took all her
self-control not to shrink in utter repugnance from his caress.
"Oh!" she inwardly moaned as she turned to gaze out of the window when
he had gone, "what crime have I committed in marrying a man I----"
But even her innermost secret thought recoiled from the admission that
she _despised_ her husband, the father of her child.
She went upstairs to her room to spend the time, while she waited for
the hour of Catherine's arrival, in putting some last touches to the
baby outfit she had made and in writing a note to Daniel's step-mother
expressing her sympathy with her recent illness and reiterating her
promise to come to see her as soon as possible after her confinement.
"I'll mail it _myself_," she decided as she sealed and stamped her
letter, "or give it to Catherine to mail."
At four o'clock, feeling a little nervous, but quite determined, she
went downstairs to await the signal ring at the door. As it was ten
days since Catherine had been to the house, Margaret hoped that Emmy,
the maid, was off her guard, unless the episode of this morning had
caused Jennie and Sadie to renew their watchfulness.
"It's so stupid of them, to say the least, to imagine I'd submit to
such interference in my own personal affairs!" she reflected.
She knew their suspicions would be aroused if they found her in the
parlour, for of late she spent most of her time in her own room. But
she felt quite ready to deal with them as effectively as she had done
that morning.
She had not been downstairs long when a ring at the door-bell brought
her to her feet, only to sink down again trembling, for it was not the
four by twos agreed upon between her and Catherine; and a moment later
Mrs. Ocksreider was shown into the parlour. Jennie and Sadie came
directly into the room to receive with much satisfaction this
distinguished and now frequent visitor who, until Daniel's marriage,
had confined her calls on them to once a year; and they looked
surprised to see Margaret already there.
"Were you _expecting_ Mrs. Congressman Ocksreider that you're down
already?" Jennie suspiciously inquired, when the sisters had greeted
Mrs. Ocksreider obsequiously.
"No, but I'm expecting Miss Hamilton," Margaret quietly announced. "I
have an appointment with her at four-thirty. When she comes, I shall
have to ask you all to excuse me."
Jennie and Sadie looked the consternation they felt at Margaret's
audacity, not to say disrespect, in asking such a person as Mrs.
Ocksreider to excuse her because of an appointment with that Hamilton
girl!
"It's to be hoped," Jennie rapidly thought, "that Mrs. Ocksreider will
think it's a _business_ appointment she's got with our Danny's clerk,"
while Sadie ostentatiously consulted her new wrist-watch to see how
soon they might expect the objectionable Miss Hamilton.
"You and your husband's stenographer seem to be great friends," said
Mrs. Ocksreider with what seemed to Margaret a rather malicious
enjoyment of her sisters-in-law's evident discomfiture.
"We are," said Margaret.
"I've always heard those Hamiltons very well spoken of, as very nice,
worthy people," Mrs. Ocksreider said in a tone of kindly condescension.
"Where do they live, Mrs. Leitzel?"
That Mrs. Ocksreider shouldn't even know where they lived, put them of
course outside the pale. Jennie and Sadie suffered acutely at
Margaret's reply.
"They live in a small rented house on Green Street," she said, and
added: "One of the few really distinguished homes in our town."
"'Distinguished?'" repeated Mrs. Ocksreider, puzzled.
"I mean, rather, it is a home that has distinction, by reason of its
inmates and its furnishings."
"Its furnishings?" questioned Mrs. Ocksreider, still puzzled.
"Its pictures and books and general good taste. One of the few
households that _have_ pictures and books."
"Oh, but we all have pictures and books, Mrs. Leitzel!"
"_Real_ pictures, I mean, and real books, too."
"But I'm sure most families of our class have the classics in their
homes," Mrs. Ocksreider protested.
"The classics' do help to furnish a room nicely, don't they?" Margaret
granted. "But the Hamiltons have books which they _read_. French and
German as well as English."
"Well, of course, a public school teacher's home would be likely to
have all kinds of books," Mrs. Ocksreider conceded, "that society
people wouldn't buy."
"Of course," Margaret agreed.
"But I don't see why that should make their little home on Green Street
what you called it--'distinguished.'"
"But I said the furnishings _and_ the inmates gave it distinction. You
see, I know because I am very intimate with them."
"I have heard that you were. It is so nice for your husband's little
stenographer that you should take her up like that. It's so unusual,
too. She's very fortunate, I'm sure."
"It's rather she that has taken me up. I'm quite proud that she thinks
me worth the time she gives me. You see she's more than Mr. Leitzel's
stenographer: she's an able law clerk. Mr. Leitzel says she's
indispensable to him."
"Then he and his sisters share your enthusiasm over the Hamiltons?"
Mrs. Ocksreider inquired in a tone of polite skepticism.
"I am the only one of us all who is intimate with them," Margaret
complacently stated.
"I didn't see them at your reception last fall, did I?"
"They didn't come," Margaret readily answered. "You know they don't go
into society at all."
Jennie and Sadie felt cold as they heard these shameless admissions,
their Danny's wife bragging of her intimacy with people whom she openly
advertised as living in a rented house on a side street and as not
going into society! Not to go into society was, in the Leitzels' eyes,
to be so abjectly unimportant as to make you want to get off the earth.
And Margaret _flaunted_ it!
"Ain't she the con_tra_ry piece though!" Jennie inwardly raged.
"Ah!" Margaret almost jumped from her chair as the door-bell at this
moment rang "four by twos."
"That's Miss Hamilton now," she announced, rising and walking as
quickly as she could (which was not very quick) across the room. "Will
you please excuse me, Mrs. Ocksreider? I am sorry, but it is an
appointment----"
But as she reached the door which opened into the hall, she saw the
front door closed abruptly by Emmy, the maid.
Instantly stepping back into the parlour, Margaret hurried to the
window, rapped upon it, then raised it and leaned out to speak to Miss
Hamilton on the pavement. "Emmy made a mistake; I _am_ at home,
Catherine. Come back, and I'll open the door."
She closed the window and again made her way heavily across the room,
smiling in a friendly way upon Mrs. Ocksreider as she passed her. "A
mistake of the maid's. I'm seeing so few people just now," she dropped
an explanation on her way.
Mrs. Ocksreider's subsequent description of the scene, in which the
Leitzel sisters' horror at Mrs. Leitzel's innocent candour about "those
Hamiltons," and the young woman's clever outwitting of her two would-be
"keepers," afforded most delectable entertainment to New Munich society
for two months to come.