When a year after she had moved into town old Mrs. Leitzel died, it was
Margaret's private conviction that the Leitzels had worried her to
death trying to find out how she had made her will. It is said that
people of mild temper are usually obstinate, and the fact stands that
no one of them ever succeeded in getting from the old woman the least
hint as to the disposition she had made of her large property.
"She would tell _you_," Daniel used to urge Margaret to find out the
coveted secret.
"But I don't care to know."
"I do. Find out for _me_."
"Not for any consideration on earth or in heaven, my dear, would I lift
my finger about a matter which is so absolutely Mrs. Leitzel's own
private and personal concern and no one else's."
The suspense and impatience with which, after her death, they awaited
the reading of the will, seemed to let loose every primitive animal
instinct of covetousness, and scarcely could they restrain, within
decent bounds, their fierce suspicions of each other and their hawklike
greed for the prey at stake.
When it was found that after a bequest to the New Mennonite
denomination, and one to the nurse, Miss Wenreich, the entire remainder
of the fortune of the deceased was left unconditionally to Margaret,
the sensations and sentiments of the Leitzels were dynamic. Even
Daniel was more chagrined than pleased. An economically independent
wife, he had already found, was not the sort of whom Petruchio (who
expressed Daniel's idea exactly) could have said:
"I will be master of what is mine own:
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything;
And here she stands, touch her whoever dares."
One couldn't maintain the Petruchio attitude, which was certainly the
true and orderly one, toward a wife who had a large income of her own
and was strangely lacking in a proper respect for her husband.
It was not until Daniel discovered that Margaret had scruples about
accepting the money that he found himself as fearful lest it should
pass out of his family into the hands of strangers as he had hitherto
been eager to get it into his own hands. The pious and solemn
arguments he employed to convince her of her duty in the matter, far
from having any weight with her, rather confirmed her in her feeling
that, having forced the Leitzels to give up a third of their
possessions to their step-mother, it put her too much in the light of a
self-interested plotter to have the money come round eventually to her.
It was, however, Catherine Hamilton who convinced her that she could
justly keep it.
It was a trial to Catherine to be obliged, when speaking of the
Leitzels to Margaret, always to curb her tongue to a hypocritical form
of respect for them; for Margaret would not countenance any reflections
upon them. So Catherine's remarks, in the present instance, though
clearly conveying her meaning, were veiled.
"Do you think, Margaret, that the Leitzels, _for their own spiritual
discipline_, ought to lose or get that money? Was old Mrs. Leitzel
wise or wrong in willing it away from them? Will you be wronging or
helping their immortal souls--if they have any," Catherine ventured
rather fearfully to add, "if you give it back to them? Another thing:
you have already learned enough about married life to know that only in
economic independence can a woman have any moral or spiritual freedom;
can she be a personality in herself, distinct from her husband's. With
all this money of your own, you will be free to control the education
of your children as you could not if your husband's money had to pay
for their education. Of course, in most cases, I suppose mothers and
fathers have no difficulty in agreeing perfectly about their children's
education; but when they differ radically, what a boon to a
conscientious mother to have means at her command to do for her
children what she thinks essential for their welfare in life! My dear,
it's the solution of the whole confounded 'woman movement' that women
shall be freed from an economic slavery which balks their efficiency as
mothers, as citizens, and even as wives. Also, with all this money of
your own, think what you can do to help me capitalize and organize my
ideal school for girls! Why, I can begin next week!"
"And we _will_ begin next week! I've thought of another thing: I can
now use the money Uncle Osmond left me to help educate Hattie's
children. She and Walter are the sort that will never be affluent.
They care too little about money ever to acquire any."
"And you can have an automobile of your own in which you will now and
then take my mother out for an airing to her great benefit!" added
Catherine.
"It shall be at her disposal," declared Margaret.
Another thing had occurred to her while Catherine had been speaking:
Daniel, she knew, would never allow her a just portion of his wealth
for the upkeep of their home and the rearing of their children. Every
dollar of his that she spent would have to be discussed and argued
about. This fortune which Mrs. Leitzel had left to her was really only
her fair share in her husband's possessions, which she could use freely
and quite independently of him.
When once she was convinced that she was justified in keeping the
money, the frenzied raging of the Leitzels affected her not at all,
though Hiram's fury and agony carried him to the length of telling her
to her face that she was stealing the money (his own mother's money)
from _his_ children to give it to her own son and daughter.
As for Daniel, his chagrin over his step-mother's will swung round, in
the end, to a chuckling glee over his wife's cleverness.
"After all, Margaret, you do have some business ability! I declare you
outwitted us all with the cute way you managed to get things into your
own hands! That wasn't a bad deal, my dear, not at all a bad deal, and
I shouldn't have supposed it was _in_ you! You seemed to care so
little for money! And to think that all the while you were working
such a clever scheme as this! Well, I knew when I decided to marry you
that you weren't stupid. I trust that Daniel Junior will inherit the
joint business acumen of his mother and father. He'll be some business
man if he does, won't he?"
"God forbid!" was Margaret's reply, which Daniel thought quite
idiotically irrelevant. But he was ceasing to try to understand what
seemed to him his wife's unexplainable inconsistencies.
He even came, in time, to submit, without fretting, to Margaret's ideas
of running a household; finding her innovations, which had at first
seemed to him madly extravagant, to be as necessary to his comfort and
convenience as to hers. But he never did get so used to them as to
cease to feel an immense pride in what Jennie and Sadie called
"Margaret's tony ways." He always covertly watched the faces of guests
in his home (for they had guests now) to note wonder and admiration at
the elegance of its appointments, the formal service at meals, the
dainty tea table brought into the parlour every day at five, and the
many other fastidious trifles introduced into their daily life.
It is to be noted that though the intimacy of Catherine and Margaret
continued throughout their lives, Catherine never once found courage to
put to her friend and confidante the question to which she could not,
in her knowledge of Margaret's character, find any answer: "What in the
world was it that ever induced you to marry Daniel Leitzel?"
It was only through motherhood, which was to Margaret her religion,
that she learned, among other great lessons, how mistaken she had been
in selling herself for a home. And the paramount ideal which she
always held up to her boy and girl, as being the foundation of
everything that was worth while in life, was the highest conception of
mated love which she could possibly give them.