Margaret bent all her energies to readjusting the household--_her_
household now--in preparation for Walter's visit, to which she could,
under these changed conditions, look forward with eager pleasure. But
here again she ran upon a snag.
"Every cloud has a silver lining," Daniel sentimentally remarked,
preparatory to the discussion of the new furniture necessary to replace
what his sisters had removed. "You can now have your own things sent
up from the Berkeley Hill home. Half of all that old mahogany, silver,
rugs, books, and pictures. I couldn't afford to _buy_ such valuable
furniture as you've got there. And solid silver, too."
"Strip Berkeley Hill, my sister's home! and bring those things into
this house!" Margaret almost gasped. "But don't you see, Daniel, this
isn't the sort of house for old colonial furniture? It would be
incongruous. What this house needs is early Victorian."
"The freightage on your things won't come to nearly so much as new
furniture would cost, even though we bought the grade of stuff the
girls had here. And you can tell your sister Harriet that _I'll_ pay
for the crating and packing. It isn't right that I should, for they've
had the use of your things all this time, but you can tell her I'm
perfectly willing to do that. Or, never mind writing to her; we can
arrange it with Walter when he comes."
So strong was Margaret's sentiment for Berkeley Hill that it would have
hurt her as much to see its familiar furnishings in this alien setting
in New Munich as it would have hurt Harriet to strip her home. She did
not, however, pursue the discussion with Daniel. Walter would be
privately informed as to her wishes in the matter; and the places left
bare by Jennie's and Sadie's departure would remain bare until Daniel
saw fit to buy furniture to fill them.
Meantime, she managed, though with difficulty, to prepare, with what
furniture she had, a comfortable room for her brother-in-law.
"If Daniel were poor, I'd feel I _ought_ to help him out, painful as it
would be to me to see any part of Berkeley Hill installed here. But he
doesn't need to be helped out. Far from it!"
Daniel assumed Walter's visit to mean that at last this slow-moving
Southerner had got round to the point of noticing his insistent demands
for a settlement of Margaret's share in Berkeley Hill. So he awaited
his arrival with much complacency.
Walter Eastman reached New Munich at ten o'clock one Wednesday morning
and Margaret met him at the station. By the time Daniel came home to
luncheon at one o'clock the "important Berkeley Hill business" of which
Walter had telegraphed was entirely concluded between him and Margaret,
as were also a few other items of importance.
"For the present, Walter, I prefer not to tell Daniel about this news
you have brought me," she suggested at the end of their interview,
which, by the way, found her rather white and agitated.
"But of course you understand, my dear," returned Walter, "that you
can't keep him in ignorance of it long?"
"Of course not. Just a few days. Perhaps not so long."
"Any special reason for deferring such a pleasant announcement?"
"I want to spring it on him as a palliative, a sort of compensation,
for something else which won't prove so pleasant."
"Ah, by the way," said Walter with apparent irrelevancy, crossing his
long legs as they sat together on a sofa of the now very bare
sitting-room, "what was the meaning, Margaret, of all that bluff you
put up on me about Western gold mines owned by a friend of yours who
thought perhaps his step-mother had a legal claim, and so forth. Quite
a case you made out!"
"It's a true case. I'm much interested in it. And Daniel's clerk
happened to know that the land was vested in the step-mother's husband
at the time of his death and that he died without a will. What I want
you to tell me now is this: can any power on earth keep that widow from
her one third interest in those coal--gold mines, if she claim her
share?"
"No, if she has never signed away her rights."
"She hasn't done that."
"You say your husband's clerk was working on the case? Then it's the
case of a client of his?"
"Yes, the case of a client of his."
"And a friend of yours, you said?"
"Yes. His clerk wasn't exactly working on it; she simply told me, when
I asked her, that she knew the mining land to have been vested
absolutely in the husband."
"And you wrote me that the step-mother has not had her share because
she's too ignorant to claim it, and that she's in want. That right?"
"Yes."
"I should say, then, no mercy should be shown those who have defrauded
her. They should be made to pay up, especially as it was this old
woman's hard labour and self-sacrifice in the first place (so you
wrote) that saved the home and land for the family."
"Tell me, Walter, dear, _how_ shall the old woman set about getting her
dues?"
"Simply hire a lawyer to bring suit."
"But her religion forbids her to go to law."
"Then you're stumped. Nothing to be done."
"But I've learned that sometimes the New Mennonites allow some one else
to bring suit _for_ them."
"Aha!" laughed Walter. "All right. Let her have her lawyer bring suit
for her."
"Can he surely recover her share?"
"Surely, if all the facts you've given me are correct, her share can be
reclaimed without a struggle."
"I'm certain that all the facts I've given you are correct."
"You seem to be certain of a good deal about these far-distant
acquaintances of whom I never heard, Margaret."
Margaret cast down her eyes, her face flushing; but after an instant:
"Thank you, Walter," she said. "I'm very much indebted to you. One
more favour: kindly refrain from mentioning this case of the silver
mines to Daniel."
"'Silver' mines?"
"Gold mines. Ah, here he comes now! And not a word, remember, of the
news you've brought me!"
"All right, my dear."
"And as for the furnishings of Berkeley Hill; sit tight and don't
argue. Daniel always comes round to my way in the end, but it takes a
bit of time and diplomacy."
"Poor Daniel, he's like the rest of us, henpecked lot that we are!"
Walter teased her. "He comes round to your way because he's got to; no
escape! But if I know your Pennsylvania Dutch Daniel, Margaret, and
his letters to me have been very self-revealing, he wishes sometimes
that the good old wife-beating days were with us yet!"
"No, Daniel isn't like that; he isn't a bit _brutal_--at least in the
sense of rough. He's very gentle, really."
Daniel, now knowing his brother-in-law to be an impecunious and, by
Leitzel standards, rather an incapable, unimportant sort of a man,
manifested in his curt greeting of him the small esteem he felt for him.
But he found, during his noon hour of respite, that his repeated
efforts to talk business with this discounted individual were very
skilfully parried.
"We have a pretty big bill, Eastman, against that South Carolina
estate," he began over his soup. "A whole year's rent, you know, for
Margaret's half of the house, land, and furniture. But Margaret is
willing to waive that, in fact, _quite_ willing, and I concur in her
willingness. We shan't press that. We'll let that go, especially now
that you've come to settle up. If you'd waited much longer, we might
not have been so willing to waive the year's rent. Eh, Margaret?"
"_Please_, Daniel!" Margaret murmured, hot with shame as she saw
Walter's crimson embarrassment and rising anger.
"Well, of course, I don't mean," said Daniel, who considered himself a
remarkably tactful man, "that Margaret would have gone so far as to
bring suit. Not against her own sister, certainly. Nor would _I_,
either, sanction such an extreme measure. But right is right, you
know, and law is law."
"I've got a case on my hands," retorted Walter, avoiding Margaret's
eye, "of a widow who for over thirty years has received no rent for her
third share of some mines--oh, silver mines."
"You ought to draw a big fee for a case like that!" exclaimed Daniel,
his eyes gleaming. "A regular big haul; enough to set you up for life!
Silver mines! Well, I should say!"
"I don't expect to get much out of it."
"You'll never get much out of anything," grumbled Daniel, "the way
_you_ do business!"
"Sometimes, however, business men are so extremely devoted to their own
interests, to the exclusion of all human appeal and all natural ties,
that their 'vaulting ambition o'erleaps itself.'"
"Ah, Shakespeare!" nodded Daniel. "Very aptly quoted. Yes, but the
prudent, astute business man looks ahead and on all sides before he
'vaults.' I've never taken one hasty, ill-considered step in my life.
And look at the result! I've a--a very comfortable living," he
concluded, with a furtive glance at his wife.
"The modern rule for getting rich," Walter, having quite recovered his
equanimity, casually remarked, "seems to be to skin other people."
"Ah, but you go about it too clumsily, my friend!" returned Daniel,
grinning. "Don't try to skin people who have all the law and, I may
say, all the brains on their side!"