Her Husband's Purse

XXIX

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.