Part 19

"As I'm obliged to get back to the office by two o'clock, I suppose I shall have to wait until this evening. But I've already waited over a year!" said Daniel, glancing at Walter to note the embarrassment he expected his brother-in-law to feel at this thrust.

But Walter was, by this time, beyond feeling anything but wonder and amusement at Leitzel's conversation, with, also, a sense of consternation at his fresh realization of poor Margaret's fate in being saddled to a "mate" like this, who, apparently, let her have none of the compensations which his huge wealth might have afforded her.

"But you know," he trivially replied to Daniel's thrust, "'all things come to him who waits.' You waited pretty long for a wife, didn't you, Mr. Leitzel, and now you've _got_ one--very much so!--a hotheaded little Southerner, with ideals of chivalry and honour and honesty which I fear must make your hair stand up sometimes, you bloated capitalist! Yes, in these days, when a man marries, he finds himself very _much_ married, eh, Leitzel?" he inquired with a lightness which Daniel thought extremely unbecoming under the circumstances.

"Well," he retorted irritably, "I'll admit that sometimes I do think I'm a little too much married!"

"I'm afraid we've lost the art of keeping them within their 'true sphere'; they've got rather beyond us in these days, haven't they?"

"They're not nearly so womanly as they used to be!" said Daniel sullenly.

"But what are we going to do about it, poor shrimps that we are? Suppose, for instance, that a man's wife has a quixotic idea of honour, eccentric scruples about using money she thinks was not come by in quite an ideal way, what's a corporation lawyer going to _do_ about it, if she sets up her will, eh?"

"There are the quite easy divorce courts," said Daniel darkly.

"But there is also alimony."

"The marriage laws of our land," affirmed Daniel, "ought to be revised."

"They will be, as soon as women get the vote," said Walter. "And then----"

But Margaret, fearing the lengths to which her brother-in-law might go in this reckless mood, brought the talk abruptly to an end.

"It's a quarter to two, Daniel. You'll be late to your office. I'll have dessert brought in at once. And you know it always takes you fifteen minutes to say good-bye to the children. It feels so grand, Walter, to refer to 'the children!' In the plural! I can't yet believe or realize it! And as for Daniel--well, he's a Comic Supplement, you know, about those twins," she rattled on, keeping the talk, during the remainder of the luncheon, away from thin ice. So that at last, when Daniel rose to go away, the suspicion roused by his brother-in-law's remarks had been brushed aside and lost sight of; for the time being, at least.

XXVII

Daniel Leitzel's marriage had revealed to him a trait in himself of which he had never before been conscious, a trait which no circumstances of his life, hitherto, had roused into action; he discovered, through his love for Margaret, that he could be intensely jealous. Any least bit of her bestowed otherwhere than upon himself was sure to arouse in his heart this most painful emotion. He was jealous of her passion for books; of her friendship for Catherine Hamilton; of her devotion to the twins; and now, to-day, of her evidently chummy relation with her brother-in-law. It was, then, not only his eagerness to get down to real business with Walter Eastman that made him hurry through his office work and get home an hour earlier than usual, but it was also the uncomfortable jealousy he felt for Eastman, together with a return, during the afternoon, of the vague suspicion Eastman's rambling, enigmatical remarks at luncheon had roused in his mind, that goaded him.

The fact was that some things Walter had said, as they kept recurring to Daniel, were coming to have a sinister significance.

To his keen disappointment and chagrin, however, he found, when he got home, that neither his wife nor their guest was in the house.

Seeking out the very capable maid Margaret had succeeded in securing, he discovered her in a state of sulky indignation that would scarcely vouchsafe to him a civil or intelligible answer to his inquiries.

"Where is Mrs. Leitzel, Amanda?"

"I don't know where your wife's at. She went out with that fellah," the girl crossly replied.

"'Fellah?'" repeated Daniel, indignant in his turn at what, even in a New Munich servant, seemed very rude familiarity.

"The fellah you're eatin' and sleepin' here," elucidated Amanda.

"Did she take the twins with her?"

"No, sir, she did _not_; she left 'em in _my_ charge!"

"Why, then, are you not with them?" Daniel asked in quick anxiety.

"I _was_ with 'em till them two women come in here interferin'!"

"Two women? Ah, my sisters! Are they here? Where are they?"

"Out there on the porch wakin' up them two babies your wife left asleep, with me in _charge_ of 'em! If them women hadn't of been two of them to one of me, they wouldn't of got the chanct to wake up them twinses, you bet you!"

Daniel banged the kitchen door spitefully and started for his sisters, his sore and lacerated soul crying out for the sympathy, the consolation their own aggrieved spirits would offer to his wrongs and worries at the hands of a wife who, owing him everything, seemed to find her chief occupation in irritating and thwarting him.

He found Jennie and Sadie bending solicitously over the twins, who, roused from their regular sleep, were wailing fretfully.

"Yes, Danny, no wonder your poor babies cry!" Jennie exclaimed as he appeared. "All alone out here in the cold, on a day like this yet! Yes, this is where we found 'em when we come in! This is where you can find 'em most any time!"

"We saw Margaret start out walking with a strange young man, Danny," Sadie explained, "and we come right over to see whatever had she done with these poor babies; and this is where we found them--alone out here in the cold."

"They wasn't alone, no such a thing!" Amanda shouted from the doorway whither she had followed Daniel. "I was right in here with my eye on 'em every minute, like Missus give me my orders before she went out a'ready! I'm a trustworthy person, I'd like you to know, if I am a poor workin' girl, and I ain't takin' no in_sults_!"

"Nobody is blaming _you_," Daniel snapped back at her.

"Yes, they are, too! These here two women come in here and begun orderin' me round like as if _they_ was hirin' me! I take my orders from _one_ Missus, not from three!"

"We told her to bring the coach indoors and she flatly refused!" cried Jennie.

"My orders," said Amanda, folding her arms and standing at defiance, "was to leave 'em out. When Missus tells me to bring 'em in, I'll bring 'em in. Not _till_."

"Amanda," said Daniel impressively, "these ladies are my sisters and when they tell you to do a thing, you must do it."

"Do they hire me and pay me my wages?"

"_I_ hire you and pay you your wages."

"Then have I got _four_ bosses yet at this here place? Not if I know it!"

"Take this coach into the house!" ordered Daniel.

"When Missus tells me to. See?"

"Danny," Sadie offered a suggestion, "leave me take the babies over to our house while their mother is away. The idea of her going off like this and leaving these poor infant twins in the care of a hired girl that she ain't had but a week and don't know anything about! Don't it beat all!"

"I'd thank you not to pass no insinyations against my moral character!" Amanda retorted. "If them twinses own mother could trust 'em to me, I guess it's nobody else's business to come in here interferin'. I wasn't told, when I took this place, that I'd be up against a bunch like _this_, tryin' to order me round and passin' in_sults_ at me!"

"That will do, Amanda," said Daniel with dignity. "Go out to your kitchen."

Amanda flounced away, as Sadie wheeled the baby-coach down the paved garden path to the sidewalk, followed by anxious cautions from Jennie to "go slow" and not strain her back pushing that heavy coach.

"You poor Danny!" Jennie commiserated with him as they together entered the parlour. "The way Margaret uses you, it most makes me sick! Even her hired girl she teaches to disrespect you! Ain't?"

"My life with Margaret is not exactly a 'flowery bed of ease,'" Daniel ruefully admitted.

"If only you hadn't of been so hasty to get married already, Danny! You could of done so much better than what you did!"

"But with all Margaret's faults," Daniel retorted, his pride of possession pricked by the form of Jennie's criticism, "she's the most aristocratic lady I ever met."

"Oh, well, but I don't know about that either, Danny. It seems to me she has some wonderful common ways. I never told you how one day when our hired girl was crying with a headache, Margaret went and _put her arm around her_ yet and called her 'my dear,' and made her lay down till she rubbed her head for her! I told her afterward, she could be good to Emmy without making herself _that_ common with her."

"And what did she say?"

"Och, she just laughed. You know how easy she can laugh. At most anything she can fetch a silly laugh."

Jennie walked into the sitting-room as she talked, inspecting Margaret's makeshift arrangements to conceal the gapes caused by the removal of the furniture which was hers and Sadie's.

"I'm awful sorry, Danny, that you'll have the expense of new furniture, when if Margaret had treated us right, we never would have left you. And the very day you can make her pass her promise that she'll act right to us, we'll be right back."

"I'll never get her to," Daniel pouted. "She's too glad you're gone."

"'Glad!'" echoed Jennie, horrified at the idea that her act of vengeance in her sudden departure with her things an act so fearfully expensive and inconvenient to her and Sadie, should be affording joy to her enemy.

"She was working you all the time to get you to go. She's half crazy with delight at keeping house by herself. I certainly can't get her to promise anything that would bring you _back_."

"Oh!" Jennie gasped, her face almost gray from her deep sense of defeat. "But look how we took all the care of housekeeping off of her! And how it saved _expense_ for us to live together and----"

"She never thinks of the _expense_ of anything!"

"And to think," said Jennie, her voice choked, "she feels _glad_ to put you to all that exter expense and she with not a dollar of her own! Och, Danny, I don't know how you take it so good-natured off of her! I can't bear to see you used so! And to think that you'll have to spend for furniture if she keeps on being too stubborn-headed to apologize to us!"

"Well, as to the furniture, Jennie, her brother-in-law is here, and I'm going to have him ship to us the furniture that belongs to Margaret from her old home. It's very handsome and expensive furniture. Much more expense than I could afford to buy. It's the handsomest furniture I ever saw."

"But I didn't know she had _any_thing!" Jennie exclaimed in surprise.

"She has nothing but a half interest in a tumbledown old country place."

"And look at how lordly she wants to act to you, and to us yet, that have our own independent incomes!"

They had reached the dining-room in their inspection of the house, and Jennie noticed at once that the navy blue owl which for ten years had stood on the sideboard was not there.

"Oh!" she cried in a tragic voice, "is the owl broke?"

"No. Margaret won't have it on the sideboard."

"Won't have it on the sideboard! And haven't _you_ something to say if that owl shall stand on the sideboard or no?"

"I told her you and Sadie wouldn't like it when you found she had taken it off."

"Danny!" Jennie said in a sepulchral tone, "mebby she's fooling you: mebby her dopplig (awkward) hired girl broke the owl, or either Margaret broke it herself, and is afraid to tell you. Do you _think_ mebby?"

"No, it's up in the garret. She told Amanda to put it clear out of sight in the garret."

"Garret! The blue owl pitcher! But _why_ don't she want it here?" Jennie demanded in mingled anger and wonder.

"Margaret don't like that owl, Jennie."

"To spite _you_ does she say she don't like it and put it in the garret."

"I told her I would miss it. I'm so used to it."

"And don't she care if you want it on the sideboard setting, Danny?"

"She said she'd save up and buy me a cut-glass pitcher to take its place."

"Well, to think you haven't the dare to have your own owl on the sideboard setting when you want it, Danny! We'll see once if you can't!"

She suddenly strode to the door leading into the kitchen and pulled it open.

"Amanda, go up to the garret and fetch down the blue owl pitcher you took up there."

"When Missus sends me."

"Danny!" Jennie appealed to her brother, "do you hear the impudence she give me?"

"Amanda," Daniel commanded, stepping to the door, "go up to the garret and fetch down that blue glass pitcher as my sister tells you to do."

"Missus told me to pack it away in the garret and I done it. When she tells me to unpack it, I'll unpack it. Not till."

"Amanda," said Daniel, looking white and obstinate, "you'll go upstairs and bring down that owl, or you'll pack your things and leave this house."

"I'll leave this here house when Missus sends me! I like the place and I'm stayin' till I'm fired by _her_. Not till."

"If you're not out of here in half an hour"--Daniel took out his watch and glanced at it--"I'll send for the police and have you ejected."

Amanda glared for an instant. "Well, my goodness!" she exclaimed at length, "to think of my gettin' up against a common bunch like this here, when I thought (judgin' by Missus) that I was gettin' into a _swell_ family, the kind I'm used to! All right! Suits _me_ to go. I never worked anyhow at a house where they kep' only one maid. I'm used to livin' with _aristocrats_!" she flung her parting shaft as she cast off her white apron, stamped out of the kitchen and upstairs to her room.

"Now," Jennie triumphed as she and Daniel went back to the sitting-room, "when Margaret comes home, she'll find out how nice it is to have no hired girl and _us_ not here to cook, and her with company to supper, and the babies over at our place where _she--can't--come_!" she said with a cold-blooded incisiveness. "Mebby, after all, Danny, she will wish she had us back here to keep care of things for her."

"I'd like to know," Daniel pouted, "why she stays out so long with Walter Eastman! I came home early on purpose to talk business with him. I have several things of importance to settle up with him. I want to get through with it and see him off, for I'm in a hurry to get Margaret's furniture here, and to see what can be done with her property down there. I'm sure _I_ can make it worth something. I'll get Eastman's wife to give me a mortgage on it and then I'll----"

The banging of the front door checked him. "They are back at last," he said.

"No, it's that sassy hired girl going," said Jennie with satisfaction as she glanced from the window and saw the girl departing with a heavy suit-case.

"I guess," said Daniel, "I'll have to eat my supper over at your house, Jennie, if you'll invite me. It looks as if there wouldn't be any supper here. Or, if there is, it will be late. And you know how I like to have my meal on time."

"Of course you do. You come right along home with me, Danny, and get your nice, warm supper at the time you're used to it! Emmy's making waffles for supper this evening."

"I'll leave a note for Margaret," said Daniel, going to a desk in a corner of the room. "She might be frightened if she came in and found us all gone and no explanation."

"Leave her _be_ frightened; she _needs_ to worry about you, Danny!"

"Yes, but it would be bad for Daniel Junior's milk to have her get frightened."

Jennie turned away primly. The frankness of speech upon ordinarily unmentionable topics, which had seemed unavoidable since the advent of the twins, was a severe strain upon her virgin sense of propriety.

"Come on, Danny, it's five o'clock and we eat at half-past. I want for you to have your nice, hot waffles right off the stove."

As they left the house, Daniel saw, a few pavements off, Margaret and Walter coming leisurely toward home, Margaret talking with eager animation and Walter laughing in evidently keen enjoyment.

Daniel set his teeth as he whirled about and moved at his sister's side in the opposite direction.

"All right!" he determined resentfully, looking like an angry bantam, "I won't come home with the babies to-night until I'm _good and ready_."

XXVIII

When again, the next morning, Daniel was obliged to arise betimes and start up the fires, he felt a little regretfully that perhaps he had been a bit hasty in discharging the capable, if impertinent, Amanda.

"She was never impertinent to _me_," Margaret replied to his reason for sending away her excellent maid. "And of course she did perfectly right in refusing to take orders from Jennie that were directly contrary to mine."

"But from me?"

"But you say you told her she must obey your sisters even when that meant disobeying me. But there! I won't discuss it! Be sure, however, that I shall take steps to protect myself against an interference with my affairs that upsets my household. I shall instruct my next maid that when Jennie and Sadie appear, she's to stand by her job and 'phone for the police!"

After breakfast that morning Daniel decided that he would not depart for his office until he had "had it out" with his brother-in-law.

But Walter's ideas as to the obligations of hospitality differed rather widely from Daniel's. As a guest in Daniel's house, he could not transact the business he meant that day to put through. So he declined emphatically his host's invitation to come with him to the sitting-room to "talk business."

"At your office, Mr. Leitzel."

Daniel's insistence that it suited him better to have it over right here, "without any further procrastination," did not move Walter from his persistent refusal to discuss their affairs under this roof. He felt rather sure that in any business discussion he might have with Daniel Leitzel he would be tempted to use language which a gentleman cannot use to his host. After the interview, he intended to take his suit-case and go to the Cocalico Hotel.

Arrived at Leitzel's private office (Daniel feeling not at all amiable at being forced to this second futile postponement of the adjustment which surely Eastman must realize was inevitable) Walter stretched himself out lazily in a comfortable chair by the window, lit a cigar, and waited complacently for Daniel to open up fire.

So Daniel, feeling strong in the righteousness of his cause, outlined elaborately his plan to improve Berkeley Hill and rent it for the benefit of the joint owners; or, if Walter and Harriet preferred, he would take a mortgage against Harriet's half of the estate.

Walter heard him through without a word of comment.

"I wish," Daniel finally concluded, "to begin work on the place at once to make it marketable. Can you give me the names and addresses of any reliable contractors of Charleston?"

"Plenty of them."

"Good," said Daniel, taking from his pocket a notebook and pencil. "Well?"

"But it is quite useless for you to write to a contractor," said Walter, blowing a long line of smoke from his mouth: "first, because Mrs. Eastman would not consent to mortgage away her half of Berkeley Hill; secondly, neither Margaret nor my wife would consent to such alterations as you propose, which would indeed quite ruin the place; thirdly, Margaret wishes her sister to continue to live at Berkeley Hill."

The cool effrontery of this latter made Daniel stare.

"And you," he sharply demanded, "wouldn't you feel a little more comfortable if you paid _rent_ for the house you live in?"

"But why," smiled Walter, "should my 'feeling' in the matter interest _you_?"

"Bluff and impudence won't carry you through when I'm on the job, Eastman! You'll have to come to terms or get into trouble. We'll seize your wife's half of the estate for back rent, and then you'll have nothing, whereas as I propose to work this thing----"

"Your methods of 'working' business deals, Leitzel, are perfectly familiar to me and I prefer to have nothing to do with them."

"You prefer to continue to live in Margaret's house without in any way compensating her? Well, I warn you, I don't intend to stand for it. Since you take the stand you do, I'll make you pay rent for the past year and a half!"

"Margaret didn't tell me she had given you power of attorney over her property. I happen to know that she and my wife have a perfectly good understanding as to Berkeley Hill. It isn't at all necessary for you and me to discuss it."

"Oh, yes, it is, unless you want me to----"

"There is a much more important matter," Walter interposed, "that we need to discuss."

Daniel's sharp little eyes bored into his like two gimlets. "Eh? What?"

"The case of your step-mother's right to one third of her husband's estate."

"What do you mean?"

"Your wife's conscience, which you will of course think quixotic, but which I, being of her own class and kind and country, quite understand, will not permit her to live on money gotten by the defrauding of a helpless and ignorant old woman; nor will she consent to her children's inheriting such dishonest money. I must tell you this morning, Mr. Leitzel, that you and your sisters and brother must at once restore to your step-mother what is her own, or I will bring suit for her."

Daniel, though looking white, nevertheless answered quite steadily: "My step-mother is a New Mennonite; they do not sue at the law."

"But get others to sue for them."

"Did Margaret send for you to come up North for _this_?" Daniel demanded, a steel coldness in his voice and look.

"She did not send for me at all. I came to see her on quite another matter--connected with the Berkeley Hill estate."

"Indeed? But she has given you these data which you are using as blackmail, has she, as to my father's widow, her religion, her rights, her wrongs, her ignorance, and so forth?"

"Margaret has not once mentioned to me your father's widow."

"Then what do you mean? How do you know Margaret objects to the source of my wealth? And what's your authority for all the rest of your bluff?"

"I know she objects to the source of your wealth because I know _her_, as you, Leitzel, could not know her if you lived with her through three lifetimes, since you are not, as I've already intimated, of her race or class or country. I learned all the facts--the _facts_, notice--as to the illegal withholding from your step-mother of her share of her husband's estate entirely through surmise."

"'Surmise?' You surmised them! How extraordinarily perspicuous! It's rather surprising so sharp a lawyer has not made more of a success of himself, eh?"

"Your idea of success and mine would differ as widely as does your understanding and mine of your wife. To get down to business, Mr. Leitzel, you must at once restore to your step-mother her share in her husband's estate, or we bring suit."

"'We?' Who?"

"I, for the old woman."

"And what," Daniel asked, his lips stiff, "do you think you are going to _get_ out of this?"

"A reasonable fee."

"Margaret authorizes you to say all this to me?"

"She doesn't know I'm saying it. Has no least idea I meant to say it."

"Oh, so you are acting independently, as a counterstroke to save yourself from being forced to pay rent for the good home you and your family enjoy?".

"I am acting independently of Margaret anyway," returned Walter, quite unruffled.

"Margaret will forbid it!"