Her Husband's Purse

V

Margaret's suddenly conceived passion for the young minister went through all the usual phases. It was not, of course, the individual himself, but her impossible inhuman ideal of him, of which she was enamoured, the man himself was as unknown to her as though she had never seen him; his image merely served as a dummy to be clothed with her rich imaginings. The thought of him dwelt with her every moment of the day, making her absent-minded and listless, or feverishly talkative. She made excuses to go frequently to town, to a dentist, to a doctor, to see Harriet, just for a chance to drive past the minister's parsonage, for even if she did not catch a glimpse of him, it was manna to her soul to look upon the place of his abode. She would have delighted to have lain her cheek upon the doorsill his foot had pressed. The actual sight, once or twice, of his ungainly figure on the street, set her heart to thumping so that she could not breathe. Her discovery, through a paragraph in the religious news of a daily paper, that he was married, did not affect her, for she was not conscious of any desire to marry him; she only wanted to see him, to hear him, to feel herself alive in all her being, in his presence.

Even the sermon she managed to hear him preach one Sunday morning, when a visit from one of the scholarly gentlemen whom her uncle considered dangerous, gave her a free half day, even her recognition, through that sermon, of the man's mental barrenness, did not quench her passion.

What did finally kill it, after three months of mingled misery and ecstasy, was an occasion as trivial as that which had given birth to it. One day, in front of a grocery shop, where some provisions were being piled into her phaeton, and where, to her quivering delight, the Object of her adoration just chanced at that moment to come to make some purchases, she heard him say to a negro employee of the grocer, "Yes, sir, two pecks of potatoes and a head of cabbage; no, sir, no strawberries."

To say "sir" to a negro! The scales fell from Margaret's eyes. Her heart settled down comfortably in her bosom. Her nerves became quiet. The young minister stood before her as he was. His Adam's apple was no longer a peculiar distinction, but an Adam's apple. For this was South Carolina.

Thereafter, her uncle found her a much more comfortable companion. But keenly observant though he was, he had never suspected for a moment, during those three months of Margaret's obsession, that she was actually experiencing the thing he was so persistently trying to avert; for it would not have been conceivable to him that any woman, least of all his niece, Margaret Berkeley, could fall in love with "a milksop" like "Rev. Hoops," as the poor man's printed visiting card proclaimed him.

Never in all the rest of her life could Margaret laugh at that youthful ordeal. That she could have been so insanely deluded was a mystery to wonder over, to speculate about; but the passion itself, the depth, the height, the glory of it, its revelation of human nature's capacity for ecstasy—all this was a reality that would always be sacred to her.

At the same time, her discovery that an emotional experience so intense and vital, so fundamental, could grow out of an absolute illusion and be so ephemeral, made her almost as cynical about love as was her uncle himself; so that always after that the seed of skepticism, which he so earnestly endeavoured to plant in her mind, fell on prepared soil.

Had Margaret adopted indiscriminately her uncle's philosophical, ethical, social, political, or even literary ideas, it would certainly have unfitted her for living in a society so complacent, optimistic, and conventional as that of most American communities. As it was, the opinions she did come to hold, from her intercourse with this fearless, if pessimistic, thinker, and from her wide and varied reading with him, and also the ideals of life she formed in the solitude which gave her so much time for thought, were unusual enough to make her unique among women. One aspect of this difference from her kind was that she was entirely free from the false sentimentality of the average young woman, and this in spite of the fact that she was fervently imaginative and, in a high degree, sensitive to the beauty and poetry of life. Another and more radical point of difference was that she had what so very few women do have—spiritual and intellectual fearlessness. And both of these mental attitudes she owed not only to her own natural largeness of heart and mind, but to the strong bias given her by her uncle toward absolute honesty.

While, by reason of her more than ordinary mentality, as well as because of a very adaptable disposition, Margaret bore her life of self-sacrifice and isolation with less unhappiness than most girls could have done, there was one phase of it which was vastly harder upon her. Her nature being unusually strong in its affections, it took hard schooling indeed before she could endure with stoicism the loveless life she led. It was upon her relation with her elder sister Harriet, the only human being who really belonged to her, that she tried to feed her starved heart, cherishing almost with passion this one living bond; idealizing her sister and her sister's love for her, looking with an intensity of longing to the time when she would be free to be with Harriet, to lavish upon her all her unspent love, to live in the happiness of Harriet's love for her.

Harriet's lukewarmness, not manifest under her easy, good-natured bearing, was destined one day to come as a great shock to Margaret.

It was one night about five months before her uncle's sudden death that he talked with her of his will. They were together in the library, waiting for Henry, the negro manservant, to finish his night's chores about the place before coming to help the master of the house to bed.

"I trust, Margaret," Berkeley, with characteristic abruptness, broke a silence that had fallen between them, "that you are not counting on flourishing as an heiress when I have passed out?"

"I must admit," said Margaret apologetically, "that I never thought of that, stupid as it may seem to you, Uncle Osmond. Now that you mention it, it would be pleasant."

"'Pleasant?' To have me die and leave you rich?"

"I mean only the heiress part would be pleasant—and having English dukes marrying me, you know, and all that."

"How many English dukes, pray? I fancy they are a high-priced commodity, and my fortune isn't colossal."

"I shouldn't want a really colossal fortune."

"Modest of you. But," he added, "if I did mean to do you the injury of leaving you all I have, it would be more than enough to spoil what is quite too rare and precious for spoiling"—he paused, his keen eyes piercing her as he deliberately added—"a very perfect woman."

"Meaning me?" Margaret asked with wide-eyed astonishment.

"So I don't intend to leave you a dollar."

"Suit yourself, honey."

"You are like all the Berkeleys, entirely lacking in money sense. Now the lack of money sense is refreshing and charming, but disastrous. I shall not leave my money to you for four reasons." He counted them off on his long, emaciated fingers. "First, because you wouldn't be sufficiently interested in the damned money to take care of it; secondly, you'd give it away to your sister, or to her husband, or to your own husband, or to any one that knew how to work you; thirdly, riches are death to contentment and to usefulness and the creator of parasitism; fourthly, I wish you to be married for your good, sweet self, my dear child, and not for my money."

"But if I'm penniless, I may have to marry for money. From what you tell me of love, money is the only thing left to marry for. And if it has to be a marriage for money, I prefer to be the one who has the money, if you please, Uncle Osmond."

"Well, you won't get mine. I tell you you are worth too much to be turned into one of these parasitical women who are the blot on our modern civilization. In no other age of the world has there been such a race of feminine parasites as at the present. Let me tell you something, Margaret: there is just one source of pure and unadulterated happiness in life, and that I bequeath to you in withholding from you my fortune. Congenial work, my girl, is the only sure and permanent joy. Love? Madness and anguish. Family affection? Endless anxiety, heartache, care. You are talented, child; discover what sort of work you love best to do, fit yourself to do it preëminently well, and you'll be happy and contented."

"But my gracious! Uncle Osmond, what chance have I to fit myself for an occupation, out here at Berkeley Hill, taking care of you? These years of my youth in which I might be preparing for a career I'm devoting to you, my dear. So I really think it would only be poetic justice for you to leave me your money, don't you?"

Her uncle, looking as though her words had startled and surprised him, did not answer her at once. Considering her earnestly as she sat before him, the firelight shining upon her dark hair and clear olive skin, the peculiar expression of his gaze puzzled Margaret.

"That," he said slowly, "is an aspect of your case I had not considered."

"Of course you had not; it wouldn't be at all like you to have considered it, my dear."

"Well," he snapped, "my will is made. I'm leaving all I have, except this place, for the founding of a college which shall be after my idea of a college. Berkeley Hill, however, must, of course, remain in the family."

"Don't, for pity's sake, burden the family (that's Harriet and me) with Berkeley Hill, Uncle Osmond, if you don't give us the wherewithal to keep it up and pay the taxes on it!" protested Margaret.

Again her uncle gazed at her with an enigmatical stare. "Huh!" he muttered, "you've got some money sense after all. More than any Berkeley I ever met."

"I know this much about money," she said sententiously: "that while poverty can certainly rob us of all that is worth while in life, wealth can't buy the two essentials to happiness—love and good health."

"Since when have you taken to making epigrams?"

"Why, that is an epigram, isn't it! Good enough for a copybook."

"I tell you, girl, if I leave you rich, I rob you of the necessity to work, and that is robbing you of life's only worth. The most pitiable wretches on the face of the earth are idle rich women."

"If it's all the same to you, Uncle Osmond, I'd rather take my chances for happiness with riches than without them."

"I am to understand, then, that you actually have the boldness to tell me to my face that you expect me to leave to you all I die possessed of?"

"Yes, please."

"It's wonderfully like your damned complacency! Well, as I've told you, I've already made my will."

"Here's Henry to take you upstairs. But you can make it over, or add a codicil. Which shall I bring you to-night, an eggnog or beer?"

"I'm sick of all your slops. Let me alone."

"Yes, dear. Good-night," she answered with the perfunctory, artificial pleasantness which she always employed, as per contract, in responding to his surliness; and the absurdity, as well as the audacity, of that bought-and-paid-for cheerfulness of tone, never failed to entertain the old misanthrope.

Five months later the will which Osmond Berkeley's lawyer read to the "mourners" gave Berkeley Hill to Margaret and her sister, Mrs. Walter Eastman, while all the rest of the considerable estate was left to a board of five trustees to be used for the founding of a college in which there should be absolute freedom of thought in every department, such a college as did not then exist on the face of the earth.

Harriet's husband, being a lawyer, offered at once to secure for Margaret, through process of law, a reasonable compensation for her eight years of service. But Margaret objected.

"You see Uncle Osmond didn't wish me to have any of his money, Walter."

"Don't be sentimental about it, Margaret. Your uncle had a lot of sentiment, didn't he, about your sacrificing your life for him?"

"He had his reasons for not giving me his money. He sincerely thought it would be better for me not to have it. He really did have some heart for me, Walter. I'm not sentimental, but I couldn't touch a dollar he didn't wish me to have."

"Then you certainly are sentimental," Walter insisted.

Almost immediately after the funeral Harriet and her family moved out from Charleston to live at Berkeley Hill with Margaret, retaining the two old negroes who for so many years had done all the work that was done on the estate.

"We couldn't rent the place without spending thousands in repairing it, so we'll have to live on it ourselves."

The sentiment that Margaret and Harriet cherished for this old homestead which had for so long been occupied by some branch of the family was so strong as to preclude any idea of selling the place.

It was Margaret's wish, at this time, to go away from Berkeley Hill and earn her own living, as much for the adventure of it as because she thought she ought not to be a burden to Walter. But the Southerner's principle that a woman may with decency work for her living only when bereft of all near male kin to earn it for her led Walter to protest earnestly against her leaving their joint home.

Harriet, too, was at first opposed to it.

"You could be such a help and comfort to me, Margaret, dear, if you'd stay. Henry and Chloe are too old and have too much work to do on this huge place to help me with the children; and out here I can't do as I did in Charleston—get in some one to stay with the babies whenever I want to go anywhere. So you see how tied down I'd be. But with you here, I should always feel so comfortable about the children whenever I had to be away from them."

"But for what it would cost Walter to support me, Harriet, dear, you could keep a nurse for the children."

"And spend half my time at the Employment Agency. A servant would leave as soon as she discovered how lonesome it is out here, a half mile from the trolley line. It's well Henry and Chloe are too attached to the place to leave it."

"So the advantage of having me rather than a child's nurse is that I'd be a fixture?" Margaret asked, hiding with a smile her inclination to weep at this only reason Harriet had to urge for her remaining with her.

"Of course you'll be a fixture," Harriet answered affectionately. "Walter and I are only too glad to give you a home."

So, for nearly a year after her uncle's death, Margaret continued to live at Berkeley Hill.

Harriet always referred to their home as "My house," "My place," and never dreamed of consulting her younger sister as to any changes she saw fit to make in the rooms or about the grounds.

It was during these first weeks of Margaret's life with Harriet that she suffered the keen grief of finding her own warm affection for her sister thrown back upon itself in Harriet's want of enthusiasm over their being together; her always cool response to Margaret's almost passionate devotion; her abstinence from any least approach to sisterly intimacy and confidence. It was not that Harriet disliked Margaret or meant to be cold to her. It was only that she was constitutionally selfish and indifferent.

So, in the course of time, Margaret came to lavish all the thwarted tenderness of her heart upon her sister's three very engaging children.

But before that first year of her new life had passed over her head she came to feel certain conditions of it to be so unbearable that, in spite of Walter's protests (only Walter's this time), she made a determined effort to get some self-supporting employment. And it was then that she became aware of a certain fact of modern life of which her isolation had left her in ignorance: she discovered that in these days of highly specialized work there was no employment of any sort to be obtained by the untrained. School teachers, librarians, newspaper women, even shopgirls, seamstresses, cooks, and housemaids must have their special equipment. And Margaret had no money with which to procure this equipment. There is, perhaps, no more tragic figure in our strenuous modern life than the penniless woman of gentle breeding, unqualified for self-support.

The worst phase of Margaret's predicament was that it had become absolutely impossible for her to continue to live longer under the same roof with Walter and Harriet. The simple truth was, Harriet was jealous of Walter's quite brotherly affection for her—for so Margaret interpreted his kindly attitude toward her. Having no least realization of her own unusual maidenly charm, the fact that her brother-in-law was actually fighting a grande passion for her would have seemed to her grotesque, incredible; for Walter, being a Southern gentleman, controlled his feelings sufficiently to treat her always with scrupulous consideration and courtesy. Therefore, she considered Harriet's jealousy wholly unreasonable. Why, her sister seemed actually afraid to trust the two of them alone in the house together! (Margaret did not dream that Walter was afraid to trust himself alone in the house with her.) And if by chance Harriet ever found them in a tête-à-tête, she would not speak to Margaret for days, and as Walter, too, was made to take his punishment, Margaret was sure he must wish her away. Of course, since she had become a cause for discord and unhappiness between Harriet and Walter, she must go. A way must be found for her to live away from Berkeley Hill.

It was this condition of things which she faced the night she lay on the couch in her sister's room keeping guard over her sleeping children while Harriet and Walter were seeing Nazimova in "Hedda Gabler."

VI

Walter Eastman, on his way to town next morning, to his law office, considered earnestly his young sister-in-law's admonition given him just after breakfast, that he must that day borrow for her a sufficient sum of money to enable her to take the course of instruction in a school for librarians, giving as security a mortgage on her share in Berkeley Hill. And the conclusion to which his weighty consideration of the proposition brought him was that instead of mortgaging their home, he would bring Daniel Leitzel, Esquire, out to Berkeley Hill to dinner.

"Margaret's never had a chance. She's never in her life met any marriageable men. It's about time she did. She hasn't the least idea what a winner she'd be, given her fling! And the sooner she's married," he grimly told himself, "the better for me, by heaven!"

Walter was too disillusioned as to the permanence and reality of love to feel any scruples about letting Margaret in for matrimony with a man twenty years her senior and of so little personal charm as was the prominent Pennsylvania lawyer, Mr. Leitzel, so long as the man was decent (as Leitzel so manifestly was) and a gentleman. It would have taken a keener eye than Walter Eastman's to have perceived, on a short, casual acquaintance, that the well-mannered, able, and successful corporation lawyer was not, in Walter's sense, a gentleman. For Daniel had, ever since the age of ten, been having many expensive "advantages."

And so it came to pass that that same evening found Mr. Leitzel, after a dainty and beautifully appointed dinner at Berkeley Hill, alone with his host's young sister-in-law, in the wonderfully equipped library of the late eminent Dr. Osmond Berkeley.

His comely hostess, Mrs. Eastman, had excused herself after dinner to go to her babies, and Eastman himself had just been called to the telephone.

Daniel, always astutely observant, recognized their scheme to leave him alone with this marriageable young lady of the family, while Margaret herself never dreamed of such a thing.

Daniel was always conscious, in the presence of young women, of his high matrimonial value. He had always regarded his future wife, whoever she might be, as a very fortunate individual indeed. His sisters, in whom his faith was absolute, had, for twenty-five years, been instilling this dogma into him. Also, Daniel was mistaking the characteristic Southern cordiality of this family for admiration of himself. Especially this attractive girl, alone with him here in the great, warm, bright room, packed with books and hung with engravings and prints, manifested in her attentive and pleasant manner how irresistible she found him. Daniel loved to be made much of. And by such a girl as this! The blood went to his head as he contemplated her, seated before him in a low chair in front of the big, old-fashioned fireplace, dressed very simply all in white. How awfully attractive she was! Odd, too, for she wasn't, just to say, a beauty. Daniel considered himself a connoisseur as to girls, and he was sure that Miss Berkeley's warm olive skin just escaped being sallow, that her figure was more boyish than feminine, and her features, except, perhaps, her beautiful dark eyes, not perfect. But it was her arresting individuality, the subtle magnetism that seemed to hang about her, challenging his curiosity to know more of her, to understand her, that fascinated him in a manner unique in his experience of womankind. Subtle, indeed, was the attraction of a woman who could, in just that way, impress a mind like Daniel's, which, extraordinarily keen in a practical way, was almost devoid of imagination. But everything this evening conduced to the firing of what small romantic faculty he possessed: the old homestead suggestive of generations of ease and culture, the gracious, soft-voiced ladies, their marked appreciation of himself (which was of course his due), the good dinner served on exquisite china and silver in the spacious dining-room (Daniel, in his own home, had never committed the extravagance of solid mahogany, oriental rugs, and family portraits, but he had gone so far as to price them and therefore understood what an "outlay" must have been made here). And then the beautiful drawing-room into which he had been shown upon his arrival, furnished in antique Hepplewhite, the walls hung with Spanish and Dutch oils. And now this distinguished looking library in which they sat. Almost all the books Daniel possessed, besides his law books, were packed into a small oak bookcase in his own bedroom. But here were books in many languages; hundreds of old volumes in calf and cloth that showed long and hard usage, as well as shelves and shelves of modern works in philosophy, science, history, poetry, and fiction. What would it feel like to have been born of a race that for generations had been educated, rich, and respectable—not to remember a time when your family had been poor, ignorant, obscure, and struggling for a bare existence? In New Munich the "aristocracy" was made up of people who kept large department or jewellery or drug stores, or were in the wholesale grocery business; even Congressman Ocksreider had started life as an office boy and Judge Miller's father had kept a livery stable. This home seemed to stand for something so far removed from New Munich values! And these two ladies of the house—he was sure he had never in his life met any ladies so "elegant and refined" in their speech, manner, movements, and appearance.

Daniel's recognition of all this, however, did not humble or abash him. He had too long enjoyed the prerogative that goes with wealth not to feel self-assured in any circumstances, and his attitude toward mankind in general was patronizing.

It never occurred to him for an instant that a family living like this could be poor. Wealth seemed to him so essentially the foundation of civilization that to be enjoying social distinction, ease, comfort, and even luxury, with comparative poverty, would have savoured of anarchy.

Margaret, meantime, was regarding "Walter's odd little lawyer-man," who had been quite carelessly left on her hands, with rather lukewarm interest, though there were some things about him that did arrest her curious attention: the small, sharp eyes that bored like gimlets straight through you, and the thin, tightly closed lips that seemed to express concentrated, invincible obstinacy.

"No wonder he's a successful lawyer," she reflected. "No detail could escape those little eyes, and there'd be no appeal, I fancy, from his viselike grip of a victim. He'd have made even a better detective."

The almost sinister power of penetration and strength of will that the man's sharp features expressed seemed to her grotesquely at variance with his insignificant physique.

"There never has been a great woman lawyer, has there?" she asked him, "except Portia?"

"'Portia?' Portia who? I had not—you mean, perhaps, some ancient Greek?" asked Daniel. "Ah!" he exclaimed, '"The quality of mercy is not strained!' Yes. Just so. Portia. "Merchant of Venice," he added, looking highly pleased with himself. "I studied drama in my freshman year at Harvard."

"Did you?"

"Yes. My sisters had me very thoroughly educated. Very expensively, too. But this 'Portia'—she was of course a fictitious, not a historic, character, if I remember rightly. Women haven't really brains enough, or of the sort, that could cope with such severe study as that of the law." He waved the matter aside with a gesture of his long, thin fingers.

"I'm not sure of that," Margaret maintained.

"But the courtroom is no place for a decent woman," said Daniel dogmatically.

"But she could specialize. These are the days, I'm told, when to succeed is to specialize. She wouldn't need to practise in the criminal courts."

"I trust," said Daniel stiffly, "you are not a Suffragist. You don't look like one."

"How do they look?"

"I never saw one, for we don't have them in New Munich, where I live. But I'm sure they don't look so womanly as you do."

"I hope that to look womanly isn't to look stupid," said Margaret solicitously.

"Why should it?—though to be sure a woman does just as well if she isn't too bright."

"If to be womanly meant all that some men seem to think it means, we'd have to have idiot asylums for womanly females," declared Margaret. "I suppose"—she changed the subject and perfunctorily made conversation—"a lawyer's work is full of interest and excitement?"

"Well," Mr. Leitzel smiled, "in these days, a lawyer for a corporation has got to be Johnny-on-the-spot."

"I have always thought that a general practitioner must often find his work a terrible strain upon his sympathies," said Margaret.

"Oh, no; business is business, you know."

"And necessarily inhuman?"

"Unhuman, rather. A man must not have 'sympathies' in the practice of the law."

"He can't help it, can he?—unless he's a soulless monster."

Daniel looked at her narrowly. What a queer expression for a young lady to use: "a soulless monster."

"Your brother-in-law, for instance," he inquired with his thin, tight little smile, "does he, as a general practitioner, find his cases a great strain on his sympathies?

"Oh, he hasn't enough cases to find them a great strain of any kind."

"So?" Daniel lifted his pale eyebrows. It was, then, inherited wealth, he reflected, that maintained this luxurious home, and if so, this Miss Berkeley, probably, shared that inheritance. His heart began to thump in his narrow chest. His calculating eye scanned the girl's figure, from her crown of dark hair to her shapely foot.

Now it is necessary to state just here that Daniel's one vulnerable spot being his fondness for young pets of any species and especially for children, together with his deep-seated aversion to the idea of his money going to the offspring of his brother Hiram (for, of course, he would never will a dollar of it away from the Leitzel family), this shrewd little man never appraised a woman's matrimonial value without considering her physical equipment for successful motherhood. He had even read several books on the subject and had paid a big fee to a specialist to learn how to judge of a woman's health and capacity for child-bearing. The distinguished specialist had laughed with his amante afterward at the way he had "bluffed and soaked the rich little cad."

"I certainly did make him pay up!" he had chuckled. "And as he'll never find just the combination of physical and mental endowments I've prescribed for him, I've saved some woman from the fate of becoming his wife! Money-making is his passion—a woman will never be—and his interest in it is matched only by his keenness and his caution. He's a peculiar case of mental and spiritual littleness combined with an acumen that's uncanny, that's genius!"

It was, in fact, Daniel's failure to discover a maiden who answered satisfactorily to all the tests with which this specialist had furnished him, together with his sister's helpful judgment in "sizing up" for him any possible candidate for his hand, that had thus far kept him unmarried; that had, he was sure, saved him from a matrimonial mistake.

As to his view of his own fitness for fatherhood, had he not always led a clean and wholesome life? Was he not expensively educated, clever, industrious, honest within the law, and eminently successful? What man could give his children a better heritage?

Yet the day came when the wife of his bosom wondered whether she committed a crime in bearing offspring that must perpetuate the soul of Daniel Leitzel.

"This estate," Daniel cautiously put out a feeler to Miss Berkeley, "belonged to your grandfather?"

"To several of my grandfathers. It came to us from my uncle."

"A lawyer?"

"Dr. Osmond Berkeley, the psychologist," Margaret said, thinking this an answer to the question, for she had never in her life met any one who did not know of her famous uncle. "My goodness!" she exclaimed as she saw that Mr. Leitzel looked unenlightened, "you don't know who he was? He's turning in his grave, I'm sure!"

"I never heard of him," said Daniel sullenly.

Margaret smiled kindly upon him as she said confidentially: "Between ourselves, I don't myself know just exactly what a psychologist is. I've been trying for nine years to find out—though my uncle earned his living by it—and a good living, too."

"Didn't he ever explain it to you?"

"Oh, yes. He told me a psychologist was 'one who studies the science which treats inductively of the phenomena of human consciousness, and of the nature and relations of the mind which is the subject of such phenomena.'"

Daniel looked at her uncertainly. Was she laughing at him? "It's just mental science, you know," he ventured. "I studied a little mental science at college. It was compulsory. But I studied it so little, I didn't really know very much about it."

"If you had studied it a lot, say under William James or Josiah Royce, I'm sure you'd know even less about it than you do now. My own experience is that the more one studies it, the less one knows of it."

"Are you a college graduate?" Daniel asked with sharp suspicion; he didn't care about tying up with an intellectual woman. The medical specialist had said they were usually anæmic, passionless, and childless.

"No," Margaret admitted sadly. "I never went to school after I was sixteen." Daniel breathed again and beamed upon her so approvingly that she hastened to add: "But I lived here with Uncle Osmond, so I could not escape a little book-learning. I'm really not an ignorant person for my years, Mr. Leitzel."

"I can see that you are not," Daniel graciously allowed. "Are you fond of reading?" he added, conversationally, not dreaming how stupid the question seemed to the young lady he addressed.

"Well, naturally," she said.

"Yes, I suppose so, with such a library as this in the house. It belongs to—to you?"

"What? The books?" she vaguely repeated. "They go, of course, with the house. Do you accomplish much reading outside of your profession, Mr. Leitzel?"

"No."

"Not even an occasional novel?"

"I never read novels. I did read 'Ivanhoe' at Harvard in the freshman English course. But that's the only one."

Margaret stared for an instant, then recovered herself. "I see now," she said, "why you have done what they call 'made good.' You have specialized, excluding from your life every other possible interest save that one little goal of your ambition."

"'Little goal?' Not very little, Miss Berkeley! The law business of which I am the head earns a yearly income of——"

But he stopped short. If this girl were destined to the good fortune of becoming Mrs. Leitzel, she must have no idea of the size of his income. Nobody had, not even his sisters. He often smiled in secret at his mental picture of the astonishment and delight of Jennie and Sadie if suddenly told the exact figures; and certainly his wife was the last person in the world who must know. It might make her extravagant.

"The annual earnings of our law-firm," he changed the form of his sentence, "are sufficient to enable me to invest some money every year, after paying the twenty-five lawyers and clerks in my employ salaries ranging from twenty-five hundred dollars a year down to five dollars a week. So you see my 'goal' was not little."

"I suppose even your five-dollar-a-week clerks have to be especially equipped, don't they?" Margaret asked, with what seemed to him stupid irrelevance, since he was looking for an exclamation of wonder and admiration at the figures stated.

"Of course, we employ only experienced stenographers," he curtly replied.

"This specializing of our modern life, narrowing one's interests to just one point; one can't help wondering what effect it's going to have upon the race."

"Eugenics," Daniel nodded intelligently. "You are interested in eugenics?" he politely inquired. "It's quite a fad these days, isn't it, among the ladies, and even among some gentlemen, if one can believe the newspapers."

"It's not my fad," said Margaret.

"You like children, I hope?" he quickly asked.

"Do I look like a woman who doesn't?" she protested, not, of course, following his train of thought. She rose, as she spoke, and went across the room to turn down a hissing gas-jet. Daniel's eyes followed her graceful, leisurely walk down the length of the room, and as she raised her arm above her head, he took in the delicate curve of her bosom, her rather broad, boyish shoulders, the clear, rich olive hue of her skin. The specialist he had consulted years ago had said that a clear olive skin meant not only perfect health, but a warm temperament that loved children.

"Anyway," thought Daniel with a hot impulse the like of which his slow blood had never known, "she's the woman I want! I believe I'd want her if she didn't have a dollar!"

It was upon this reckless conclusion that, when she had returned to her seat, he suddenly decided to put a question to her that would better be settled before he allowed his feelings to carry him too far.

"But," thought he as he looked at her, "I've got to put it cautiously and—and delicately."

"Miss Berkeley?"

"Yes, Mr. Leitzel?"

"I've been thinking of buying myself an automobile."

"Have you?"

"A very handsome and expensive one, you know."

"Ah!"

"Yes. But now I'm hesitating after all."

"Are you?"

"Yes. Because there's another expense I may have to meet. I'm going to ask you a question. Which, in a general way, do you think would cost more to keep—an automobile or—or a—well, a wife?"

"Oh, an automobile!" laughed Margaret.

Daniel grinned broadly as he gazed at her; evidently she suspected the delicate drift of his idea and was advising him for her own advantage. Nothing slow about her!

"Wives are cheap compared to automobiles," she insisted.

"You really think so?" He couldn't manage to keep from his voice a slight note of anxiety. "Living here with your married sister, you are in a position to judge."

Margaret began to wonder whether this man were a humourist or an idiot. But before she could reply, their tête-à-tête, so satisfactory to Mr. Leitzel, was interrupted. Mr. and Mrs. Eastman returned to the library.

Now as the formality of chaperoning was not practised in New Munich, Daniel, with all his "advantages," had never heard of it. When, therefore, the Eastmans settled themselves with the evident intention of remaining in the room, their guest found himself feeling chagrined, not only because he preferred to be alone with Miss Berkeley, but because the conclusion was forced upon him that he must have been mistaken in assuming that they had designedly left him with her after dinner.

This conclusion was confirmed when Miss Berkeley, quite deliberately leaving the obligation of entertaining him to her elders, changed her seat to a little distance from him, and in the conversation that followed took very little part. She even seemed, in the course of a half-hour, rather bored and—Daniel couldn't help seeing it—sleepy. Could it be, he wondered with a sinking heart, that she was already engaged to another man? How else explain this indifference?

But as the evening moved on, and the married pair, in spite of some subtle hints on his part, still sat glued to their chairs, though he could see that they, too, were tired and sleepy, he surmised that their "game" was to hinder Miss Berkeley's marriage!

"They'd like to keep her money in the family for their children, I guess!" he shrewdly concluded.

The easy indifference to money that was characteristic of the whole tribe of Berkeleys would have seemed an appalling shortcoming to Daniel Leitzel had he been capable of conceiving of such a mental state.

With a mind keen to see minute details, interpreting what he saw in the light of his own narrow, if astute, vision, and incapable of seeing anything from another's point of view, he came to more false conclusions than a wholly stupid and less observant man would have made.

When after another half-hour Miss Berkeley, evidently considering him entirely her brother-in-law's guest, rose, excused herself, said good-night and left the room, Daniel could only reason that Mr. Eastman had purposely withheld from her all knowledge as to who his dinner guest was.

"I'll circumvent that game!" he concluded, opposition, together with the indifference of the young lady herself, augmenting to a fever heat his budding passion. "I'll let her know who and what I am!"

Indeed, by the time he left Berkeley Hill that night, so enamoured was he with the idea of courting Miss Berkeley, he did not even remember that in a matter so important he had never in his life gone ahead without first consulting his sisters' valuable opinion. That phase of the situation, however, was to come home to him keenly enough later on.

VII

Margaret was surprised next morning at breakfast when a humorous reference on her part to "Walter's funny little Yankee" met with no response.

"But, Walter, he's a freak! Didn't you find him so, Harriet?"

"Oh, I don't know. Walter says he's a wonder in his knowledge of the law."

"He has one of the keenest legal minds I've ever met," declared Walter, "though of course——" He looked at Margaret uncertainly. "Well, Margaret, after your eight years with a highbrow like your Uncle Osmond, most other men must seem, by contrast, rather stupid to you. Even I," he smiled whimsically, "must feel abashed before such a standard as you've acquired. But really, one can't despise a man who has reached the place in his profession that Leitzel has attained, even if he is a bit—eh, peculiar."

It never occurred to Walter to recommend Leitzel by mentioning that he was a millionaire, the man's prominence in his profession being, in Eastman's eyes, the measure of his value.

"It's going to be rather rough on your husband, Margaret," Walter teased her, "to have to play up to the intellectual taste of a wife that's lived with Osmond Berkeley."

"But, Walter, other things may appeal to me: kindness and affection, for instance. My life, you know," she said gravely, "has been pretty devoid of that."

There was a moment's rather awkward silence at the table, which Margaret herself quickly broke. "This Mr. Leitzel—there's something positively uncanny in the way he seems to see straight through you to your back hooks and eyes; and I'm quite sure if there was a small safety pin anywhere about me last night where a hook and eye should have been, he knew it and disapproved of it. I'm certain that details like safety pins interest him; he has that sort of mind, if he is a great lawyer."

"Not great," Walter corrected her. "I didn't say great. He's able and skillful; but, I must admit, very limited in his scope, his field being merely the legal technicalities involved in the management of a corporation. However, he's a nice enough little fellow. Didn't you find him so?"

"I'm afraid I found him rather absurd and tiresome."

"Take care, Margaret!" Harriet playfully warned her, "or else—oh! won't you have to be explaining away and apologizing for the things you are saying about that man. He's smitten with you!"

Margaret's eyes rested upon Harriet for a moment, while her quick intuition recognized just why her joking remarks about Mr. Leitzel had met with no response in kind: her sister was actually seeing in this queer little man a possible means of getting rid of her, and Walter was abetting her!

She turned at once to the latter, swallowing the lump that had risen in her throat. "Have you done anything, Walter, about securing me a loan on our property?"

"I'm doing my best for you, Margaret."

"Thank you. Any chance of success?"

"I think so." He looked at her with a smile that was rather enigmatic, and she saw that he was really evading her.

"You know, Margaret," spoke in Harriet, "I shouldn't consent for a moment to have a mortgage put on my property."

"Tut, tut, Harriet," Walter checked his wife. "Leave it to me. Perhaps a mortgage won't be necessary."

He rose hastily, made his adieus, and departed for his office.

"Margaret, dear," Harriet began as soon as they were alone, "I assure you that to an unprejudiced observer, last night, the state of Mr. Leitzel's mind was only too manifest! You'd have seen it yourself if you weren't so inexperienced."

"What are the signs, Harriet? I confess I'd like to be able to recognize them myself."

"You sat almost behind him and he nearly cracked his neck trying to keep you in view. And when Walter drove him to the trolley line he talked of you all the way: said he liked your 'colouring' and your 'motherly manner,' and your hair and your voice and your smile and your walk! I'm not making it up—he's simply hard hit, Margaret."

"You'd like Mr. Leitzel for a brother-in-law, would you, Harriet?"

"I shouldn't see much of him, living 'way up in Pennsylvania."

Margaret, who had not yet given up craving wistfully her sister's affection, turned her eyes to her plate and stirred her coffee to hide the sensitive quiver of her lips.

"We'd see each other very seldom, certainly, if I lived in Pennsylvania," she found voice to say after a moment. "I'll go up to the baby, now, Harriet, and let Chloe come down."

When later that morning a delivery wagon left at Berkeley Hill two boxes, one containing violets, the other orchids, and a boy on a bicycle arrived with a five-pound box of Charleston's most famous confectionery, all from Mr. Leitzel to Miss Berkeley, Margaret was forced to take account of the situation.

Of course she could not know (fortunately for her admirer) that the lavishness of his offerings had been carefully calculated to impress upon her the fact which he suspected her relatives of concealing from her—the all-persuasive fact that he was rich.

A telephone call inviting her to go automobiling with him that afternoon was answered by Harriet, who at once accepted the invitation for her without consulting her.

"I'm perfectly willing, dear, to give up Mattie St. Clair's auction bridge this afternoon and chaperon you," Harriet graciously told her after informing her of the engagement she had made for her. "Chloe will have to keep the children."

Margaret made no reply. All these manifestations of Harriet's eager anxiety to be rid of her stabbed her miserably. She went away to her own room, just as soon as her regular domestic routine was accomplished, and shut herself in to think it all out.

The fact that she had, because of the secluded life she had led, reached the age of twenty-five without ever having had a lover, must account for her feelings this morning toward Daniel Leitzel, her sense of gratitude (under the soreness of her heart at her sister's attitude to her) that any human being should like her and be kind, to the extent of such munificence as this which filled her room with fragrance and beauty. No wonder that for the time being she lost sight of the little man's grotesqueness in her keen consciousness of his kindness, and of the novelty of being admired—by a man. Yes, her momentary blindness even saw him as a man. Not even the cards which came with his offerings—the one in the candy box marked "Sweets to the Sweet," and that with the flowers labelled,

Thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face.—SHAKESPEARE.

gave her more than a faint, passing amusement.

"The flower that's like thy face'; he should have sent me a sunflower or a tiger-lily," she ruefully told herself as she glanced at her dark head in a mirror. But she recalled something she had once said to her Uncle Osmond: "I'd be grateful even to a dog that liked me."

It was Harriet, not Margaret, who was shocked that afternoon at the revelation of poor Daniel's "greenness" when he found that Mrs. Eastman expected, as a matter of course, to chaperon her young sister.

Daniel interpreted this unheard-of proceeding as another proof of his sharp surmise of the previous night—the penurious determination of the Eastmans to keep Miss Berkeley unmarried. He resented accordingly the interference with his own desires and the persecution of the young lady. He would show this greedy sister of Miss Berkeley that he was not the man to be balked by her scheming, and incidentally he would win the admiration and gratitude of the girl herself by his clever foiling of the designs of her relatives.

"I'm very good to you and my sister, Mr. Leitzel," Harriet assured him as she and Margaret shook hands with him in the hall, both of them wrapped up for riding. "I am giving up an auction bridge this afternoon to go with you."

"To go with us? But—but you misunderstood my invitation, I invited only Miss Berkeley," explained Daniel frankly.

"Oh, you have another chaperon then? If only you had told me so when you 'phoned this morning I needn't have given up my bridge party."

"Told you what, Mrs. Eastman?"

"That you already had a chaperon."

"Had a—what?"

"Haven't you a chaperon, Mr. Leitzel?"

"'Chaperon?' But this isn't a boarding-school, Mrs. Eastman!"

Harriet turned away to hide her face, but Margaret laughed outright as she asked him: "Don't they have chaperons in Pennsylvania, Mr. Leitzel, to protect guileless and helpless maidens of twenty-five from any breach of strict propriety while out alone with dashing youths like you?"

"If my sister went out alone with you in Charleston, Mr. Leitzel," explained Harriet with dignity, "she would be criticised."

"But—but," stammered Daniel indignantly, "I'm a trustworthy man, Mrs. Eastman! A perfectly trustworthy gentleman!"

"My dear Mr. Leitzel, I know you are! It's only a custom among us that—oh, come on, let us start! I'm sorry, Mr. Leitzel, but I'm afraid you'll have to put up with me."

"Yes, do let us start; we don't want to miss a minute of this lovely day!" said Margaret brightly, moving toward the door and drawing her sister with her. "I very seldom get a chance to ride, and I love it. You are so kind, Mr. Leitzel," she chatted as they went down the steps to the waiting car, "to give me this pleasure, besides the beautiful flowers and delicious candy!" And thus Daniel, though inwardly fuming, and wondering at Miss Berkeley's amiable submission to such unwarrantable meddling in her personal affairs, was forced to accept with what grace he could command the doubt cast upon his "trustworthiness."

As he assisted the two ladies into the automobile, Harriet of her own accord took the front seat with the chauffeur; and Daniel, as he realized how entirely isolated with Miss Berkeley this arrangement left him, felt himself thoroughly puzzled by the whole incomprehensible proceeding.

As on the previous evening Miss Berkeley's Southern cordiality of manner was interpreted by Daniel during this drive to be a gushing warmth of feeling for himself, which fanned the flame of his egotism no less than that of his passion.

While the car moved swiftly through the picturesque roads outside of Charleston he discoursed volubly; for Daniel's idea of an enjoyable conversation was a prolonged, uninterrupted exposition, on his part, to a silently absorbed listener, of his personal interests, achievements, excellencies of character, and general worthiness. He knew no greater joy in life than this sort of expansion before an admiring or envious companion. He fairly revelled this afternoon in the steady, monotonous stream of self-eulogy which flowed from his lips. It was meant to impress profoundly the maiden at his side, and it did.

"People call me lucky, Miss Berkeley, but it isn't luck; it's deep thinking. Nobody could be lucky that didn't use his judgment and keep a sharp lookout for the main chance. To have the wit to see and seize the main chance," he reiterated with an accent that made Margaret see the words in large capitals, "that's the secret of success. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, indeed—the point of importance being not to confuse one's values—material success and spiritual defeat not always being recognized, Mr. Leitzel, as twin sisters. We don't want to miss the main chance to grow in grace and—dear me!" she pulled herself up. "It sounds like Marcus Aurelius, doesn't it? Did you make his acquaintance at Harvard?"

"Who?"

"The Roman Emerson."

"Oh, but Emerson was a New Englander, not a Roman," he kindly set her right; "known as the Sage of Concord, Massachusetts," he informed her, looking pleased with himself.

Harriet in the front seat could not resist turning her head to meet for an instant Margaret's eye.

"I had to read a 'Life of Emerson' in my Sophomore year at Harvard," continued Daniel. "Do you know that his writings never yielded him more than nine hundred dollars a year! Well educated as he was, he never made good. A dead failure. Missed the main chance, you see. Now I have always turned every circumstance and opportunity, no matter how trifling, to my own advantage. Why, from the time I first began to practise law, I refused to take any case that I didn't see I was surely going to win; so, in no time at all, I got a reputation for winning every case I took. See? I didn't take a case I didn't feel sure of winning. Good scheme, wasn't it? Well, that far-sighted policy reaped for me, very early in my career, a big harvest; for when I was just beginning to be known as the lawyer who never lost a case, there was, one night, a shocking crime committed in New Munich: a young girl, daughter of a carpenter, was supposed to have been foully and brutally murdered by her lover, the son of a petty grocer on one of our side streets. (My own residence is on Main Street, our principal resident street, a very fashionable street; house cost me twenty-five thousand!—one of the finest residences in the town—so considered by all.) Well, the evidence against the lover was overwhelming (I couldn't give you the details, Miss Berkeley, it would not be proper, you being a young, unmarried lady), and early on the morning after the murder the grocer came to see me on behalf of his son, begging me to take the case. He gave me all the facts and I saw very soon that the young man had not committed the crime. But I saw, also, that it would be very difficult to prove his innocence to a jury, and I knew the sentiment in the town to be furiously against the young man, especially among the women, so that I'd be apt to make myself very unpopular if I took his case; and that even if I cleared him there would be many who would continue to think him guilty and to think that I had simply cheated the law by my cleverness; cheated moral justice, too, and left a foully murdered female go unavenged, all for the sake of a fee. So I, of course, refused to take the case, though the grocer, believing me to be the one lawyer who could clear his son (such was my growing reputation), offered me a very large fee; he was ready to mortgage his store and house if only I'd take the case and save his son. The fee he offered certainly did make me hesitate; but you see, I was never one to let present profit blind me to future advantage. Most young men, less far-seeing and sharp, would have thought this a great opportunity to make a hit by clearing a falsely accused and perfectly innocent boy. But I saw much deeper into the situation, and so refused the case."

"Oh!" Margaret cried. "There you surely missed the 'main chance,' unless you afterward saw your mistake in time to change your mind."

"No, indeed, I didn't change my mind! And to show you how right I was in refusing the case, hear, now, of the immediate reward I reaped for my careful thoughtfulness. Hardly had the father left my office when a delegation of women of the U. B. Missionary Society (I am a member and liberal supporter of the U. B. Church of New Munich, my brother Hiram being an ordained U. B. minister) called at my office to protest against my taking the case for the young man's defence, the delegation including two very wealthy and prominent ladies. A false report had gone forth that I had taken the case. The ladies pointed out to me that I would be untrue to my Christian professions and unchivalrous to womanhood if for gold I stood up in court and defended the brutal murderer of an outraged, innocent female. 'Ladies,' I said to them, 'the case was offered to me, true; with a fee which some lawyers would have considered sufficient to justify their accepting even such a case as this. But, ladies, I refused to touch the case!' and, Miss Berkeley," said Daniel feelingly, a little quiver in his voice, "I wish you could have seen the look of admiration on the faces of those ladies, especially on Miss Mamie Welchan's, one of the two unmarried members of the Missionary Society, daughter of Dr. Welchans, our leading physician. Well, I certainly had my reward! And that night the New Munich Evening Intelligencer came out with a long article commending my fearless and self-sacrificing devotion to duty; and the Missionary Society passed resolutions of gratitude to me in the name of Womanhood, as did also the Y.W.C.A., the Epworth League, the Girls' Friendly of the Episcopal Church (our most fashionable ladies are members of that Girls' Friendly), also several of the Christian Endeavour Societies of our town. You may imagine how glad I was I had refused the case. Just suppose I had accepted it!" he said in reminiscent horror of such a false step. "For, of course, I had not foreseen such an ovation as this. While I had seen the bad effects of accepting, I had not seen the good results of refusing it. Why, from that very hour, Miss Berkeley, my success was assured! You see, people believed, then, that I was conscientious, and they trusted me with their business, and my practice grew so fast that—well, it was only a few years before I rose to be the leading lawyer of New Munich, and a few more when I secured the cinch I've got now."

"Was the young man hanged?" asked Margaret in a low voice, not looking at him.

"Oh, he," returned Daniel, surprised and chagrined at her ignoring the real point of his story, which certainly had nothing to do with the fate of the young man; "they failed to convict him, though every one believed him guilty. He had to leave New Munich."

"Couldn't you have proved his innocence?"

"But, Miss Berkeley, don't you see I'd have ruined myself if I had tried, and I made myself by refusing that case; I have always considered that episode the turning-point of my career, the pivot on which my success turned uppermost; my brother Hiram, who is a theologian, considered it Providential."

"'Providential' that a young girl should be brutally murdered and a young man falsely accused so that you might—'succeed?'"

"I should say, rather, that by the ruling of Providence the chance was given me to refuse the case and thereby win the enthusiastic approval and endorsement of the best class of our community."

Margaret was silent.

"She isn't as bright as I had supposed she was," thought Daniel, disappointed at her want of admiration of his yarn. "I wonder if she'd bear me stupid children! If I thought so, I certainly wouldn't marry her."

"Early in my career," he, however, resumed his monologue, "I took a stand for temperance. I'm a total abstainer, Miss Berkeley, and I have found that on the whole it has been to my advantage, for besides being more economical, it has seemed more consistent with my Christian professions. To be sure, when the liquor men of our precinct practically offered to send me to Congress if I would uphold their interests, I did regret that I had taken such a decided stand for temperance that I couldn't becomingly diverge from it. I would have liked well enough to go to Congress. Jennie and Sadie would have liked, too, to have me a Congressman, and my brother Hiram thought if I were in Congress I could maybe work him in as chaplain of the Senate. He doesn't get a very big salary from his church at Millerstown, Pa., though he manages to live on it without touching his capital. But no! I told the liquor men I would not go back on the principles for which I had stood for so many years. You might think I was foolishly standing in my own light, Miss Berkeley, but I ask you, how would it have looked for a church member, a consistent, practical Christian, an upholder of and contributor to the Woman's Temperance Union, to turn around and stand for the liquor interests? How would it have looked? Why," exclaimed Daniel, "it would have looked pretty inconsistent, and I wouldn't risk it. Anyway, see what I saved in the past twenty years by not standing for treats? 'Come and have a drink on me,' says a grateful client, when I've won his case for him, and I always say, 'I don't drink'; but if I did drink, to be sure I'd have to take my turn at the treats, too, don't you see, and that kind of thing does go into money. I've saved a good income by standing for temperance, besides earning the approval of an excellent element in the community. But it isn't always easy to say, 'I don't drink.' Some men take offence at it, and some laugh at you. I'll never forget how embarrassed I was the first time Congressman Ocksreider's daughter invited me to a fashionable dinner at her home and they served wine. I didn't know how they'd take it if I declined to drink, and I wanted to stand in with them. I was, at that time, very much complimented at their inviting me; they were the most prominent people in New Munich. And yet, sitting opposite me at the table, was a prominent member of the U. B. Church, who would certainly have a laugh on me if I took wine. He wasn't temperance. Now wasn't that a fix for me? My, but I was embarrassed! Well, Mrs. Congressman Ocksreider, a lady of very kind feelings, came to my help; the minute she saw how mixed-up I was, she told the waiter to pour grape juice into my glass. It's sickening stuff, but I was willing to drink it rather than forswear my principles right before my fellow church member. Yes, it takes moral courage, Miss Berkeley, to stand by your principles as I have always stood by mine. And now I see my further reward in sight, for look how things are swinging my way: temperance, Governors, Congressmen, Presidents! I may yet get to Congress on the local option issue. It looks that way."

He paused to get his breath. Margaret made no comment on his long harangue, and Harriet did not turn her head. For a while they rode in silence. But at last Margaret, feeling it incumbent upon her to talk to her entertainer, roused herself from her rather unpleasant reverie.

"You spoke of two women, Mr. Leitzel—'Jennie and Sadie'—are they relatives of yours?"

"My sisters who raised and educated me, who made me what I am!" he replied in a tone of admiration for this remarkable feat his sisters had wrought. "All I am I owe to them!"

"They are to be congratulated."

"Thank you, Miss Berkeley." Daniel bowed.

"You're welcome, Mr. Leitzel. Shall we go home now? I feel ill."