Part 2

The betrothal and impending marriage of Daniel Leitzel was the only topic of discussion that evening at the New Munich Country Club dance. Certainly New Munich had a Country Club. "Up to date in every particular." There was nothing in the way of being smartly fashionable that the town of New Munich lacked. Well, if up to the present it had lacked old families of "distinguished lineage," who, in these commercial days, regarded that kind of thing? Anyway, was not that lack (if lack it had been) now to be supplied by the newcomer, Mrs. Daniel Leitzel?

Not only at the Country Club dance, but wherever two or three were gathered together--at the mid-week Prayer Meeting, at the Woman's Suffrage Headquarters, at the Ladies' Literary Club, at the Episcopal Church Vespers, at the auction bridge given at Congressman Ocksreider's home--Danny Leitzel's betrothal was talked about.

"Just imagine this 'daughter of a thousand earls----'"

"Governors, not earls," corrected Mr. Schaeffer, the whist partner of the first speaker who was Miss Myrtle Deibert, as supper was being served at eleven o'clock on the card tables at Congressman Ocksreider's. "A thousand governors and highbrows--shy-lologists, or something like that--whatever _they_ are!"

"Well, just imagine such a person living at the Leitzels!"

"But you don't suppose Danny's sisters will still live with him after he's married!" exclaimed Mr. Bleichert, the second young man at the table.

"If he thinks it more economical, they certainly will," declared Miss Myrtle Deibert.

"Whew!" exclaimed Mr. Bleichert. "Good-_night_!"

"Who would have supposed any nice girl would have married old Danny Leitzel!" marvelled Mr. Schaeffer.

"Oh, come now," protested Mr. Bleichert who was a cynic, "why have all the girls, from the buds just out, up to the bargain-counter maidens in their fourth 'season,' been inviting Danny Leitzel to everything going, and running after him heels over head, ever since he built his ugly, expensive brick house on Main Street? Tell me that, will you?"

It should be stated here that it was an accepted social custom in New Munich for the people at one card table to discuss the clothes, manners, and morals of those at the next table.

"You know perfectly well," retorted Miss Deibert, "that at least two girls in this town, when it came to the point of _marrying_ Danny, chucked it."

"I should think they might," said Schaeffer. "Why, he isn't a man, he's a weasel, a rat, a money-slot!"

"Well, of course, the girl or old maid, 'bird or devil,' that has caught him at last, isn't marrying him for himself, but for his money," serenely affirmed Myrtle Deibert.

"When she meets his two appendages, Miss Jennie and Miss Sadie, she'll wish she was single again!" predicted Mr. Bleichert.

"They'll probably think it their business to manage Danny's wife the way they manage him," Miss Deibert declared.

"I hope she's a spendthrift," shrugged Mr. Schaeffer. "It would give Dan Leitzel the shock he needs to find himself married to a spendthrift."

"She won't be one after she's Mrs. Daniel Leitzel!" Miss Deibert confidently asserted.

"But of course she's rich--Dan Leitzel wouldn't marry a dowerless woman," said Bleichert.

"Well, then he won't let her spend _her_ money," Miss Deibert settled that.

The second young lady at this card table, a pale, serious-looking girl, did not join in the discussion, but sat with her eyes downcast, toying with her food, as the rest chattered. The other three did not give Miss Aucker credit for remaining silent because she found their gossip vulgar and tiresome (which was indeed her true reason) but attributed her disinclination to talk to the fact that during the past year Daniel Leitzel had been rather noticeably attentive to her; so much so that people had begun to look for a possible interesting outcome. Miss Deibert, Mr. Schaeffer, and Mr. Bleichert, therefore, all considered her demeanour just now to be an indelicately open expression of her chagrin at the news they discussed.

"He was her last chance," Miss Deibert was thinking. "She must be nearly thirty."

"One would think she wouldn't show her disappointment so frankly," Mr. Schaeffer was mentally criticising her.

"You know," chuckled Miss Deibert as she dabbed with her fork at a chicken croquet, "Danny, away from his sisters and his awful house and among strangers, would appear so like a perfect gentleman, even if he _is_ 'a rat, a weasel, a money-slot,' that I think even the descendant of earls or governors might be deceived. You see he's had so many advantages; he was only ten years old when they discovered coal on their land and got rich over night. And from the first, his sisters gave him every advantage they could buy for him, sending him to the best private schools, and then to college, and then to the Harvard Law School; and every one knows that Danny Leitzel is no fool, but a brilliant lawyer. So I do think that, detached from his setting here, there's nothing about Danny that would lead an unsuspecting South Carolina bride to imagine such contingencies as Jennie and Sadie and that Main Street house. I suppose _she_ lives in an ancestral colonial place full of antique mahogany, the kind we all buy at junk shops when we have money enough."

"What kind of a woman would it be that could stand Dan Leitzel's penuriousness?" Mr. Schaeffer speculated. "He makes money like rolling down hill and I've heard him jew down the old chore woman that scrubs his office and haggle over a fifty-cent bill for supper at the club. He's the worst screw I ever knew. And mind you, his bride's a Southern woman, accustomed to liberality and gallantry and everything she won't find at Danny's house!"

"Do you know (not many people in New Munich do seem to know) that the Leitzels' _mother_ is living?" said Miss Deibert.

"_What?_"

"I know a woman that knows her. She lives in the Leitzels' old farmhouse out in Martz Township."

"But Miss Jennie and Miss Sadie are too old to have a mother living."

"It's their step-mother. But she brought them up from little children and I heard she even took in washing to support them when their own father drank--and now they're ashamed of her and don't have anything to do with her. I was told she's a dear old soul and never speaks against them, but is as proud of their rise in the world as if she were their own mother. The neighbours out there say she has a hard time getting on and that they don't do a thing for her except let her live in their old tumble-down farmhouse. Isn't it a shame, as rich as they are!"

"You can't believe everything you hear."

"But it would be just like them!" affirmed Bleichert.

"Mary!" Miss Deibert suddenly laid her hand playfully on that of the silent Miss Aucker. "Congratulations on _your_ escape, my dear!"

"I was never in the least danger, Myrtle. Aren't we gossiping rather dreadfully? I've been wondering"--she looked up with a smile that transformed her seriousness into a gentle radiance--"what a newcomer like Mr. Leitzel's wife, doomed to live here, will _do_ with us and our social life, if she really is a woman of breeding and culture. I wonder whether it would be possible this winter to make our social coming together count for something more than--well, than just an utter waste of time. What is there in it all--our afternoon teas, auction bridge, luncheons, dinners, dances. The dances are of course the best thing we do because they are at least refreshing and rejuvenating. But don't you think, Myrtle, that we might make it all more worth while?"

"There's the Ladies' Literary Club," Myrtle suggested, "for those that want something 'worth while,' as you put it. I think it's an awful bore myself."

"Of course it is," Mary agreed.

"But what would you suggest then?"

"I suppose it is after all a question of what is in ourselves. A dozen literary clubs at which we read abstracts from encyclopedias wouldn't alter the fact that when we get together we have so little, so _little_ to give to each other!"

"Oh, I don't know!" protested Myrtle. "We all read all the latest books and magazines and talk about them, and----"

At an adjoining table another phase of the agitating news was being threshed out.

"If she's what the papers say she is, I suppose she'll turn up her nose at New Munich," said the daughter of the Episcopal rector.

"Oh, I don't think she need put on any airs!" said Miss Ocksreider, the hostess's daughter. "I've visited down South and I can tell you we're enough more up to date here in New Munich. Nearly every one down there, even their aristocrats, is so poor that up here they wouldn't be anybody. It's awfully queer the way those Southerners don't care anything about appearances. They tell you right out they can't afford this and that, and they don't seem to think anything of wearing clothes all out of style. There was an awfully handsome new house in the town where I stopped, and when I asked the hotel clerk who lived in it and if they weren't great swells, he said: 'Oh, no, they are not in society; they're not one of our _families_, though they're very nice people, of course, members of church and good to the poor and all like that.' 'Not in society in a little town like this Leesburg, and living in a mansion like _that_?' I said. Yes, that's the way they are down there."

"How queer!" came from two of her table companions to whom, like herself, any but money standards of value were rather vague and hazy.

"But if they don't care for money down there, then what's this girl marrying Dan Leitzel for?" one of the men candidly wondered.

"Well, you know there's no accounting for tastes."

"I could excuse any woman's marrying for money--in these days it's only prudent," said the candid one; "but I certainly couldn't respect a woman that married Dan Leitzel for anything _else_."

"It's to be hoped she's an up-to-date girl and not a clinging vine, for Danny will need very firm handling to make him part with enough money to keep her in gloves and slippers and other necessary luxuries," said Miss Ocksreider.

"Yes, if it were only her husband that she'll have to manage; but there are Miss Jennie and Miss Sadie, too!" cried the rector's daughter. "Danny doesn't so much as put on a necktie without consulting them. They even tie it for him and part his hair for him."

"That may be," said one of the men, "but let me tell you that any one who thinks Dan Leitzel hasn't any force of character better take another guess. If he lets his sisters choose his neckties for him, it's because he doesn't want to do it himself. He's the most consummately selfish individual I've ever known in the whole course of my long and useful life and the most immovably obstinate. Weak? Why, when that fellow takes a notion, he's a mule for sticking to it. Reason with him? Go out in your chicken yard and reason with your hens. It wouldn't be as futile!"

"_He_ may be independent of his sisters, but his wife won't be!" prophesied the rector's daughter darkly.

"Anyway," said Miss Ocksreider, "it will be interesting, won't it, to look on this winter at the drama or comedy or tragedy, as the case may be, of Danny Leitzel's marriage?"

"Won't it!" exclaimed in chorus her hearers.

But at one of the other tables a man was at this moment remarking: "You may all laugh at Dan Leitzel--he's funny of course--but he's all the same a man of brains and education, of wealth and influence and power. In short, he's a _successful_ man. And in Pennsylvania who asks anything more of a man?"

III

Meantime, several hundred miles away, the two objects of all this criticism and speculation were not so apprehensive for their future as were the gossips of New Munich, though it must be confessed that the prospective bridegroom, in spite of his jubilant happiness, did have one or two misgivings on certain points, and that the bride, while wholly ignorant of the real calibre of the man she was about to marry, and having no conception of such a domestic and social environment as that from which he had sprung, nevertheless did not even imagine herself romantically in love with him.

That a girl like Margaret Berkeley could have become involved in a love affair and an actual betrothal with a man like Daniel Leitzel, while apparently inexplicable, becomes, in view of her unique history and present circumstances, not only plausible, but almost inevitable.

Her entanglement with him may be dated from a certain evening just twenty-four hours before she met or even heard of him, when a little episode, trivial enough in itself, opened her eyes to an ugly fact in her relation with her sister to which she had been rather persistently blind.

She had been radiantly happy all that day because of the unusual circumstance that she had something delightful to anticipate for the evening. Her godmother, who lived in Charleston, had 'phoned out to Berkeley Hill to invite her to go with her to see Nazimova in "Hedda Gabler"; and as Margaret had seen only three plays in all the twenty-five years of her life (though she had avidly read every classic drama in the English and French languages) she was greatly excited at the prospect before her. So barren had her girlhood been of youthful pleasures, so sombre and uneventful her daily routine, and so repressed every natural, restless instinct toward brightness and happiness, that the idea of seeing a great dramatic performance loomed big before her as an intoxicating delight. All day, alone in her isolated suburban home, in charge of her elder sister's three small children and of the two rather decrepit negro servants of the great old place, she had gone tripping and singing about the house. She had been quite unable to settle down to the prosaic work of mending the week's laundry, or of wrestling with the intricacies of Henry James' difficult style in "The Golden Bowl" in which, the night before, she had been passionately absorbed.

She could scarcely wait for her sister Harriet to come home from town, where she was attending a young matrons' luncheon party, so eager was she to tell her of the treat she was going to have.

"She will be so glad for me. I've scarcely been outside the hedge for a month, and she has been having such a gay time herself--she's so popular. She'll be so glad I'm going!" she repeated to herself, trying to ignore the doubt in her heart on that point.

But when at half-past four in the afternoon Harriet returned, the blow fell upon Margaret.

"Harriet, dear!" she exultantly greeted her sister with her splendid news the moment the latter came into the house, "Aunt Virginia is going to take me to see Nazimova to-night! Oh!" She laughed aloud, and danced about the spacious hall in her delight, while her sister, a very comely young matron of thirty-five, leisurely removed her wraps.

"But Walter and I are going," Harriet casually remarked as she tossed her cloak over a carved, high-backed chair. "The editor of the _Bulletin_ gave Walter two tickets as part payment for some legal business Walter did for him. Of course you and I can't both be away from the children. Has the baby had her five o'clock bottle?"

"It isn't quite five yet."

"Will you see that she gets it, dearie? I'm so dead tired, I'll have to rest before dinner if I'm going into the city again to-night. Will you attend to it?"

"Yes."

"That's a dear. I'm going up to lie down. Don't let the children come to my room and wake me, will you, dear?" she added as she started languidly upstairs.

"But, Harriet!"

"What?" Harriet asked, not stopping.

"I accepted Aunt Virginia's invitation and she is coming out in her motor for me!"

"Too bad! I'm awfully sorry. You'd better 'phone at once or she will be offended. Tell her that as we are much too poor to _buy_ tickets for the theatre, we can't possibly refuse to use them on the rare occasions when they're given to us!" Harriet laughed as she disappeared around the curve of the winding stairway.

Margaret sprang after her. "Oh, Harriet! I can't give it up!" Her voice was low and breathless.

"But if you 'phone at once Aunt Virginia won't be cross. You know, dearie, you shouldn't make engagements without first finding out what ours are." And Harriet moved on up the stairs to her bedroom.

Margaret was ashamed of her childishness when at dinner that evening Walter, her brother-in-law, inquiring, in his kind, solicitous way, the cause of her pallor and silence, she burst out crying and rushed from the table.

Walter, looking shocked and distressed, turned to his wife for an explanation. But Harriet's face expressed blank astonishment.

"Why, I can't imagine! Unless she's tired out from having had the children all day. I was at Mrs. Duncan's luncheon, you know. I didn't get home until nearly five. I'll tell Margaret to go to bed early to-night and rest up."

Walter Eastman, searching his wife's face keenly, shrugged his big shoulders at the impenetrability of its innocent candour. No use to try to get at the truth of anything from Harriet. She wasn't exactly a liar, but she had a genius for twisting facts to suit her own selfish ends--and all Harriet's ends were selfish. Even the welfare of her children was secondary to her own comfort and convenience. Walter had no illusions about the wife of his bosom and the mother of his three children. He knew perfectly well that she loved no one as she loved herself, and that this dominating self-love made her often cold-blooded and even sometimes a bit false, though always, he was sure, unconsciously so. He was still quite fond of her, which spoke well for them both, considering that they had been married nine years. Of course, after such a length of time they were no longer "in love." But Harriet was an easy-going, good-natured woman, when you didn't cross her; and as he was also easy-going and good-natured, and never crossed her when he could avoid it, they got on beautifully and had a pretty good time together.

Walter wondered sometimes what Harriet would do if placed in circumstances where her own inclinations would have to be sacrificed for those of another. For instance, if she and Margaret had to change places.

"Take Margaret to the play with you to-night and I'll stay home with the kiddies, Harriet," he suggested, looking at his wife across their beautifully appointed dinner-table with its old family china and silver. Harriet, in her home-made evening gown, graced with distinction the stately dining-room furnished in shining antique mahogany, its walls hung with interesting portraits. "If Margaret's had charge of the children all day, she ought not to have them to-night."

"No." Harriet shook her head. "Margaret ought not to go out to-night, she's too tired. And I want _you_ with me, dear. Margaret is not my husband, you know. That's the danger of having one of your family living with you," she sighed. "It is so apt to make a husband and wife less near to each other. I am always resisting the inclination, Walter, dear, to pair off with Margaret instead of with _you_. I resist it for your sake, for the children's sake, for the sake of our home."

"I shall feel a selfish beast going to a play and leaving that dear girl alone here with the babies. They're our babies, not hers, you know."

"She loves them like her own; she's crazy about them. They are the greatest pleasure she has, Walter."

"Because she hasn't the sort of young pleasures she ought to have. And because she's so unselfish, Hat, that she lets herself be imposed upon to the limit! I've been thinking, lately, that we ought to do more than we do for Margaret; she ought to know girls of her own age; she ought to have a bit of social life, now that the year of mourning is over. It's too dull for her, sticking out here eternally, minding our children and seeing after the house."

"But she's used to sticking out here and seeing after the house. When she lived here with Uncle Osmond she had a lot less diversion and life about her than she has now, and you know how deadly gloomy it was here then. We've brightened it up and made it a home for Margaret."

"The fact that she had to sacrifice her girlhood for your uncle is all the more reason why she shouldn't sacrifice what's left of it for our children."

"If Margaret doesn't complain, I don't see why you need, dear."

"_She'd_ never complain--she never thinks of herself. Your Uncle Osmond took care not to let her form the habit! For that very reason we should think _for_ her a bit, Hattie, dear. I say, we've got to let Margaret in for some young society."

"When I can't afford to keep up my social end, let alone hers? And if we should spend money that way for Margaret, where would the children come in?"

"Oh, pshaw!" said Walter impatiently. "You're bluffing! You care no more about the money side of it than I do. You're not a Yankee tight-wad! Margaret need not live the life of a nursemaid because we're not rich, any more than you do, honey. It's absurd! And it's all wrong. What you're really afraid of, Hat, is that if she went about more, _you'd_ have to stay at home now and then with your own babies. Eh, dear?"

But he was warned by the look in his wife's face that he must go no further. He was aware of the fact that Harriet was distinctly jealous of his too manifest liking for Margaret. Being something of a philosopher, he had felt occasionally, when his sister-in-law had seemed to him more than usually charming and irresistible, that a wife's instinctive jealousy was really a Providential safeguard to hold a man in check.

He wondered often why he found Margaret so tremendously appealing, when undoubtedly his wife, though ten years older than her sister, was much the better looking of the two. He was not subtle enough to divine that it was the absolutely feminine quality of Margaret's personality, the penetrating, all-pervasive womanliness which one felt in her presence, which expressed itself in her every movement, in every curve of her young body--it was this which so poignantly appealed to his strong virility that at times he felt he could not bear her presence in the house.

He would turn from her and look upon his wife's much prettier face and finer figure, only to have the fire of his blood turn lukewarm. For he recognized, with fatal clearness, that though Harriet had the beautiful, clear-cut features and look of high breeding characteristic of the Berkeley race, her inexpressive countenance betrayed a commonplace mind and soul, while Margaret, lacking the Berkeley beauty, did have the family look and air of breeding, which gave her, with her countenance of intelligence and sensitiveness, a marked distinction; and Walter Eastman was a man not only of temperament, but of the poetic imagination that idealizes the woman with whom he is at the time in love.

"The man that marries Margaret will never fall out of love with her--she's magnetic to her finger-tips! What's more, there's something in her _worth_ loving--worth loving forever!"

At this stage of his reflections he usually pulled himself up short, uncomfortably conscious of his disloyalty. Harriet, he knew, was wholly loyal to him, proud of him, thinking him all that any woman could reasonably expect a husband to be--a gentleman of old family, well set up physically, and indeed good-looking, chivalrous to his wife, devoted to his children, temperate in his habits, upright and honourable. She did not even criticise his natural indolence, which, rather than lack of brains or opportunity, kept his law practice and his earnings too small for the needs of his growing family; but Harriet preferred to do without money rather than have her husband be a vulgar "hustler," like a "Yankee upstart."