Again New Munich was shaken to its foundations by another startling
episode in the chronicles of the Leitzels--the resurrection, as it
were, of their New Mennonite step-mother, who took up her residence in
a pretty little old stone house a few doors from Daniel's gaudy
mansion; the most expensive location in the town, with the trained
nurse, who had taken care of Mrs. Danny Leitzel when the twins were
born, established in charge of the old woman's cozy small home, as her
companion and housekeeper.
"What would we do without you Leitzels to keep us interested, not to
say excited?" Mrs. Ocksreider remarked to Margaret one day when she met
her on the street. "_I_ never knew they _had_ a step-mother."
"She has always lived out in the country at their old home," said
Margaret, "but we all thought she ought to be nearer to us now that she
is getting so feeble and helpless; so we brought her in town."
"You mean _you_ brought her in?"
"Mr. Leitzel and I, of course."
"Did she tell you I had called on her?" Mrs. Ocksreider inquired rather
defiantly, not wholly free from an uncomfortable sense of embarrassment
at the blatant curiosity that had taken her there.
"No, but I saw your card there with a number of others," said Margaret.
"You are with the old lady a great deal, aren't you? It is so nice of
you!"
"I am very fond of Mrs. Leitzel," Margaret replied.
"Well, she _is_ a dear," said Mrs. Ocksreider heartily; "one of the
sweetest little women I ever met. How prettily and cozily you have
fixed up her house! She told me you had done it all!"
"I did enjoy getting her settled near me," Margaret smiled. "She's the
greatest comfort and blessing to me--to _any_ one who has the good
fortune to come into contact with her. I have known few people in my
life so guileless, so kindly disposed toward every one! The world
needs more of such souls, doesn't it, as a little leaven in the
hardness and sordidness all about us?"
"Indeed we do!" Mrs. Ocksreider piously agreed. "And the dear old lady
is equally fond of you, my dear," she assured Margaret, patting her
arm. "She seems so _grateful_ to you," she added, putting out a feeler.
"Yes?" said Margaret noncommittally.
"I see Miss Jennie and Miss Sadie going in to see her very often, too,"
said Mrs. Ocksreider tentatively.
"Oh, yes, every day. They are very attentive to their mother,"
Margaret replied quite soberly.
"Are they so fond of her, too?" Mrs. Ocksreider asked, curiosity fairly
radiating from her ample countenance. "I had never in all these years
of my acquaintance with them heard them so much as refer to their
step-mother."
"But you were never more than very formally acquainted with them,"
Margaret returned in a tone of dismissing the discussion. "Has Miss
Ocksreider got back from New York?"
"No, I expect her to-night. Come in to see her, Mrs. Leitzel--she
adores you! And so few of us see anything of you at all since your
babies came. You don't go anywhere any more, do you? Society
certainly does miss you."
"You are very kind to say that. I am very much tied down, of course."
"If you could get a good, capable nurse," suggested Mrs. Ocksreider,
again tentatively. Margaret did not know that the town was agog at the
fact, that, rich as Danny Leitzel was, his wife kept no child's nurse
for her babies.
"I am trying to get one, Mrs. Ocksreider."
"If I hear of one, I'll send her to you. Of course you were at the
luncheon yesterday, however? _Every_ one was at _that_."
"What luncheon?" asked Margaret vaguely.
"_What_ luncheon? She asks what luncheon!" exclaimed Mrs. Ocksreider,
casting up her eyes in horror. "The Missionary Jubilee Luncheon of
course!"
"Oh!" cried Margaret, blushing, for this Missionary Jubilee Luncheon
had been an orgy of religious sentimentality in which the entire town
had united and nothing else had been talked of for weeks. "I had
forgotten all about it. I wasn't out of the house yesterday," she
added apologetically.
"But didn't Miss Jennie and Miss Sadie tell you? I remember seeing
_them_ in the throngs."
"They didn't speak of it," replied Margaret, not adding the information
for which Mrs. Ocksreider yearned, that they did not, these days, tell
her anything, since they "did not speak as they passed by."
"But Mrs. Leitzel," pursued Mrs. Ocksreider, "how _could_ you 'forget'
a thing like our Missionary Jubilee, unless you were deaf, dumb, and
blind?"
"Miss Hamilton never spoke of it to me, and I don't see many other
people. The truth is," Margaret owned up, "she and I were not
specially interested in it."
"Oh! Why not?"
"Well, I'm inclined to think that the so-called 'heathen' religions
are, in most cases, as good as, or better than, the substitute offered
by the half-educated missionaries."
"'Half-educated!' Oh, but our missionaries are not half-educated, Mrs.
Leitzel!" exclaimed Mrs. Ocksreider, shocked. "Do you know, sometimes
I think you are not religious! And one of the women missionaries said
yesterday that a woman without religion was like a flower without
fragrance, or a landscape without atmosphere."
"Epigrammatic," nodded Margaret, undisturbed. "I doubt whether she
thought that up herself."
"Oh, but she was a beautiful speaker! I only just wish you had heard
her! You believe at least in a Supreme Being, don't you, Mrs. Leitzel?"
The absurdity of such discussion on the sidewalk was too much for
Margaret's gravity and she helplessly laughed. But Mrs. Ocksreider
looked so grieved over her that she sobered up and answered, "I hope I
have a religion."
"What _is_ your religion, Mrs. Leitzel?"
"Well, I have ideals. Any one with ideals is religious."
"Is _that_ all the religion you have?"
"It's more than I can manage to live up to, and we'd better not have
_very_ much more religion than we can live out, do you think so?"
This was rather too deep water for Mrs. Ocksreider and she changed the
subject. "Oh, well, every one has to settle these questions her own
way. I should think," she quickly added, evidently not willing to miss
her chance of clearing up a matter that was in her mind, "that Miss
Jennie and Miss Sadie would be rather jealous of their mother's
devotion to you. She talks so much of you and she never speaks of
them."
"I'm new, you see," said Margaret, starting to move on as she felt the
ice getting thin. How these New Munich women could pry! "Good-bye,"
she nodded as she hurried away before she could be further sounded.
"I don't wonder, though," she thought on her way home, "that people are
curious and suspicious. How Jennie and Sadie can have the face, after
years of cruel neglect of their mother, to lavish upon her, now that
she has a fortune to will away, such obsequious and constant attention
and devotion--oh, it's nauseating! And their mother isn't a fool; she
is not taken in by it for one minute, I can see that."
It was only that morning that, when she had run in to see Mrs. Leitzel
for a minute, she had found her just concluding a strictly private
interview with her New Mennonite preacher and a young lawyer of the
town whom Margaret knew by sight.
"Don't tell Danny what you seen here, my dear, will you?" the old woman
nervously asked when they were alone. "Danny would take it hard that I
got another lawyer to tend to my business. But you see, Margaret, I
have afraid Danny would lawyer my money all off of me if he got at it."
"I'll not say a word to him," Margaret had reassured her.
"Jennie and Sadie, and Hiram when he comes to see me, now, once a week,
worries me so to make my will," she continued in a distressed voice.
"Hiram he tells me Danny's got so much more'n what he has and you got
more'n what his Lizzie has, so I had ought to leave what I got to _his_
children. And Jennie and Sadie says they can't hardly get along since
they had to give up so much to me and I had ought to leave it to them
when I die, because Danny's got a-plenty to do with a'ready and a rich
wife yet, and Hiram lives so tight he don't _need_ more'n what he's
got. 'And, anyway,' Jennie says to me, 'of course I and Sadie would
will all _we_ had to Danny's and Hiram's children. You could even make
your will so's we'd _have_ to, Mom.' And then Danny he comes in and he
says, 'You know, mother, it was my wife that has been so kind and
generous to you, persuading us all that even if the coal lands did
belong, in the first place, to my own mother, we ought to give you your
share. It was _Margaret_ that wouldn't leave us put you in a home,
where Hiram and Jennie and Sadie were all for puttin' you. And I
listened on Margaret, mother, and wouldn't do it; so I don't think it
would be more'n right for you to leave your share of my mother's estate
to _me_, seeing that it was through my wife that you got any of it.'
Well, Margaret, they all kep' worryin' me so that now to-day I did make
my will oncet. Now I can say to 'em when they ast me about it, that my
will is made a'ready."
"It is too bad that you should be worried about it so!" said Margaret
sympathetically.
"Even Hiram's Lizzie comes to see me and asks me about my will, for all
I think it's Hiram puts her up to it; she don't _want_ to do it. I
took notice a'ready, my dear, you are the only one of 'em all that
never spoke nothin' to me yet how I was a-goin' to will away my money.
"We have more interesting things to talk about, haven't we? I've run
in this morning to tell you that Mary Louise has beat Sonny cutting
teeth--she has _two_, and he hasn't one, the lazy fellow! I'll wager,
grossmutter, she'll keep ahead of him straight through life!"
"But Sonny's anyhow fatter'n sister," maintained the proud grandmother,
between whom and Margaret there was kept up a constant play of
favouritism as to the babies.
"Jennie says I'm letting Sonny get too fat and that it's dreadfully
unwholesome."
"Sonny ain't too fat!" the jealous grandmother retorted indignantly;
"he's wery _neat_!"
"If he would only draw the line at being 'neat,' but he's getting a
tummy like an alderman's!" Margaret anxiously declared.
They laughed together over the joke and the old woman looked up fondly
into the bright, sweet face at her side.
"You always cheer me up, dearie, when you come. The others never talk
to me about _nothin'_ except how I'm a-goin' to make my will, and how
I'm spendin' so much of my income, and how extravagant _you_ fitted up
this house for me with money that was rightly _theirn_; and oh, my
dear, I got so tired of hearin' about the money off of 'em! The only
other thing they ever want to talk about----"
She stopped short and closed her lips.
"Is the wicked, designing Jezebel that Danny has for a wife! Oh, yes,
I know. It's too bad, my dear, that they should fret you so! But
perhaps now that you can tell them your will is made, they'll stop
teasing you. I'm going to bring the babies in to see you this
afternoon. I must run along now; I have to go downtown and get Sonny
some new booties; he chewed up the last pair and they didn't agree with
him."
Again the old woman laughed delightedly. Margaret could not realize
what a refreshment and comfort she was to her.
"But before you go, Margaret, I want to ast you what Hiram means by
this here postal card I got off of him this morning in the mail."
Margaret took the card offered to her and read:
"D. V. will come to see you Saturday to read the Scriptures with you
and have prayer with you.
"In haste, your affectionate son,
"REV. HIRAM LEITZEL."
"I don't know who this D. V. _is_ that's coming," said Mrs. Leitzel
anxiously. "Do you, my dear? And I haven't the dare to hear religious
services with a world's preacher; it's against the rules of meeting."
"'D. V.' stands for two Latin words, '_Deo volente_,' 'God willing.'
Hiram means _he_ will be here, God willing. I hope for your sake, God
won't be willing!"
"Oh, but ain't you and Hiram got the grand education!" exclaimed Mrs.
Leitzel admiringly. "Well, if he does come, I can't leave him have no
religious services with me. Us New Mennonites, you know, we darsent
listen to no other preachers but our own, though I often did wish
a'ready I _could_ hear one of Hiram's grand sermons. They do say he
can stand on the pulpit just elegant!"
Margaret kissed her, without comment upon Hiram's greatness as a
preacher, and came away.
She was sincerely sorry that Daniel's sisters must, in the nature of
things, continue to regard her with bitter antagonism. She could have
borne it with perfect resignation if circumstances had not constantly
brought them together, for Jennie and Sadie came almost daily to her
home to see after their brother's little comforts and to fondle his
precious babies for an hour, though they never in their visits deigned
to recognize Margaret's existence. They would sail past her in her own
front hall, without speaking to her, and go straight to the nursery, or
to Daniel in his "den."
Having been the means of depriving them of some of their income, she
was unwilling to take from them, also, the pleasure they had in the
babies; so beyond a mild suggestion to Daniel that he might tell them
they must treat her with decent courtesy in her own home, or else stay
away from it, she did not interfere with their visits, though she tried
to keep out of their way when they did come.
Daniel, on his part, was aghast at the bare suggestion of further
endangering his children's inheritance by telling his sisters they must
be civil to his wife in her own home or stay away. He considered
Margaret's sense of values to be hopelessly distorted.
It was not surprising that Margaret and old Mrs. Leitzel turned with
infinite relief from the society of the rest of the Leitzels to find in
each other an escape from a materialism as deadly to the soul's true
life as ashes to the palate. It was of the babies they talked mainly:
of their cunning ways; of Margaret's plans and ambitions for them; of
the new clothes she was making for them; of Daniel's devotion to and
pride in them.
Mrs. Leitzel also heard with delighted interest Margaret's anecdotes of
her sister's children: how little Walter had called up the family
doctor on the telephone to ask whether when you got chicken-pox you got
feathers, and the doctor had said, "Not only feathers, but you crow
every morning," and now little Walter prayed every night that he might
soon have chicken-pox; also, how three-year-old Margaret, after an
operation for a swollen gland in her neck, had informed some visitors,
"I had an operation on my neck and the doctors cut it out."
Mrs. Leitzel, in her turn, would relate to her by the hour anecdotes of
her past life, some of which proved very illuminating to Margaret as to
the Leitzel characteristics, and gave her much food for thought.
"I used to have so afraid to be all alone--I can't tell you what it is
to me to feel so safe like what I do now, with this here kind Miss
Wenreich takin' care of me; and not bein' afraid to take a second cup
of tea when I feel fur it; because _now_ when my tea is all, I kin buy
more; and havin' no fear of freezin' to death if my wood gets all fur
me and I not able to go out and chop more; and not being forced any
more to eat _only_ just what would keep me alive. To have now full and
plenty and to feel safe and at peace--and to have you to love me! And
the dear babies!
"One day, my dear, sich a sharper come to my house out there in the
country and he says, 'Where's your husband at?' Well, he looked so
wicked (fur all, he was nice dressed) that I didn't say to him, 'I'm a
widow, my husband ain't livin'!' I had so afraid if he knowed I was
alone, he might do me somepin. So I sayed, 'You kin tell me your
business, I'm the same as Mister.' 'You run things and handle the
money, do you?' he ast me. 'Well, then, I want you to give some fur to
buy Bibles fur the poor.' I said I didn't have no money to spare, but
I had an exter Bible I could give him. I knowed well enough he was a
sharper, but I thought mebby my old Bible might do him some good. So I
offered it to him. But he said the Lord didn't want no second-hand
stuff fur His poor. 'You're not a Christian,' he said, 'if you won't
give any to buy _new_ Bibles fur the poor.' And Margaret, he looked so
ugly, I had so afraid of him, I shook all over; but I purtended to call
Mister, and him dead near twenty years. Well, but at that, the sharper
took hisself off! Goodness knows what he might of done at me if I
hadn't of purtended to call Mister! Ain't? Well," she drew a long
sigh, "them worryin' days is all over now, thanks to you, my dear.
It's as Danny says: I'd be in the poorhouse if it hadn't of been fur
you."
Margaret often marvelled, as she found herself deriving the keenest
pleasure from old Mrs. Leitzel's happiness and deep content, how the
Leitzels could so blindly miss, in their selfish materialism, the true
sources of joy in life.