Part 7

After that evening, during the next three weeks, the course of Daniel's love ran swiftly, if not always smoothly; for his usually unreceptive soul was so deeply penetrated by the personality of this maiden whom he desired that he actually felt, intuitively, her aversion to certain phases of his mind the worthiness of which he had never before had a doubt, and he therefore curbed, somewhat, the expression of his real self, adapting his discourse, though vaguely, to the evident tastes of the woman whose favour he sought. Also, his genuine interest in her made him less obnoxiously egotistical. Indeed, all his most offensive traits were, at this time, and unfortunately for poor Margaret's fate, kept so much in abeyance, and so strongly did she, quite unconsciously, bring out the little best that was in him, that her earlier impression of him was speedily coloured over by the more gracious effect he produced as a self-effacing and worshipful lover--a lover to one who, for many years, had not been treated with even common consideration.

Had Daniel had the least idea how little Margaret was touched by the _material_ value of the gifts he daily laid at her feet, he would certainly have saved himself some of the heavy expenditure he considered necessary for the accomplishment of his courting. If he had known that it was only the attention, the thoughtfulness, the devotion showered upon her constantly that meant so much to her whose life had hitherto been one long siege of self-sacrifice, he would surely have limited the quality, if not the quantity, of his offerings.

As Margaret came to realize that she was drifting surely, fatally, into the arms of Daniel Leitzel, her conscience forced her to try to justify her selling herself for a home.

"To marry without love? But I might have married 'Reverend Hoops' for love! And he was so much worse--less possible," she amended her reflections, "than Daniel is. It was really _love_ that I felt for that poor, bow-legged Hoops! Yes, the sort of love that would make marriage a madness of ecstasy! Too great, indeed, for a human soul to bear! And even if one did not presently discover one's mate to be a delusion with an Adam's apple, who said 'Yes, sir,' to a negro, even if he continued to seem to you a worthy object of love, such an intoxication of happiness as I felt over my imaginary Hoops could not possibly continue, one's strength couldn't sustain it--one would end with nervous prostration!

"Hattie and Walter, when they married, were romantically in love, and now, what could be more prosaic than their jog-trot relation? So much for love." She missed that phase of the question.

But there was another aspect of a loveless marriage that had to be reckoned with.

"How would I be better than a woman of the streets? Yes I would be better, for I would bear children. But children born outside of love? Well, Reverend Hoops might have been the father of my children even after I, recovered from 'loving' him, and every one of my children might have had an Adam's apple. Better, it seems to me, to marry with eyes open and not blinded by love.' Then, at least, one would not have to suffer a dreadful flop afterward. The higher one's ideal in marriage, the more certainly does one seem doomed to bitter disillusionment. Probably the jog-trot, commonplace relation between a man and woman, recognized and accepted as such, is the only one likely to endure. Insist upon romance, and the end, I verily believe, is divorce. Daniel couldn't make me unhappy any more than he could make me happy--there's that comfort at least.

"As for a great passion of the soul, the man capable of it is certainly a _rara avis_ and isn't likely to come _my_ way. If I thought," said Margaret to herself, her heart beating thickly at the vision she called up from the depths in her, "that life held anywhere for me such a great spiritual passion, given and returned----" Her face turned white, she closed her eyes for an instant upon the too dazzling light of the vision. "But then," she resumed her self-justification, "if the highest ideal of marriage is unrealizable, should one compromise with a lower ideal, or avoid marriage altogether? I remember Uncle Osmond once said it was a psychological fact that a woman was happier even in a loveless marriage than in a single life. And, dear me, the race can't stop because poets have dreamed of a paradise which earth does not know!"

It seemed to be another trick of the irony of fate that while everything in Margaret's environment and in her education conduced to make her walk blindly into such a marriage as this with Daniel Leitzel, nothing in her whole life had in the least fitted her for meeting and coping with that which was before her as the wife of such a man as Daniel really was.

She was glad that the form which her lover's proposal of marriage assumed obviated any necessity on her part for salving over her own lack of sentiment.

"Of course, you have surmised ere this, Miss Berkeley--Margaret--that I intended to make you an offer of marriage, to ask you to become--_my beloved wife_!" he said impressively, and Margaret checked her inclination to beg him not to make it sound too much like a tombstone inscription. "My proposal may seem to you precipitate; I am aware it is unusual to propose on so short a courtship; you perhaps think I ought to keep on paying attentions to you for at least several months longer. But I can spare so little time away from my business. And to court you by correspondence--well, I am certainly too much of a gentleman to send typewritten letters, dictated to my stenographer, to a lady, especially one so refined as you are and one whom I want to make my wife. And to write out letters myself, that's something I have neither time nor inclination for. And something I'm not used to either. So, I thought that while I'm down here on the spot, I might as well stay and conclude the matter. That is why I have been so pressing in my attentions to you--not to lose time, you see, which is money to me and should be to every man. So with as much haste as was consistent with propriety and tact, Miss Berkeley, I've been leading up to this present hour in which I offer you my hand and heart and," he added, his tone becoming sentimental, "my life's devotion."

It sounded for the most part like a lawyer's brief, Margaret thought, as, sitting white and quiet, she listened to him.

"You have given me every reason to think, Miss Berkeley, by your reception of my assiduous attentions, that my suit was agreeable to you and that you would accept me when I asked you to, in spite of the evident opposition of your sister and her husband."

"But they are not opposed to you. Why, what could have made you think so? They have been very kind to you, Mr. Leitzel."

"To me personally, yes; kind and hospitable. But as your suitor? No. Have they not persistently put themselves in the way of my seeing you alone, and thus tried to interfere with my taking from them you and your--taking you from them?" he hastily concluded.

Daniel had been, all through this courtship, strangely, and to himself incomprehensibly, shy about making any inquiries as to Margaret's dowry, though he fairly suffered in the repression of his desire to know what she was "worth." He wondered what it really was that made him tongue-tied whenever he thought of "sounding" her? Perhaps it was that she, on her side, was so persistently reticent not only as to her own property but with regard to _his_ possessions. Never had she even hinted any curiosity as to his income, though he had several times led up to the subject in order to give her the necessary opportunity. The matter would, of course, have to be talked out between them _some_ time. Daniel was all prepared with his own story; he knew just exactly what statements he was going to "hand out" to his future wife and what he was _not_ going to tell. But the strange thing was she didn't seem to feel the least interest in the matter.

When Margaret tried just now to assure him that her relatives' supposed interference with his attentions to her was wholly imaginary, she received her first glimpse of the notorious obstinacy of the little lawyer, and she recognized, with some consternation, that when once an idea had found lodgment in his brain, it was there to stay; no reasoning or proof could dislodge it.

"Since your relatives are opposed to your marrying," he reiterated his conviction at the end of her proofs to the contrary, "I think it would be well if we got married before I returned to New Munich. This would not only save me the expense of another trip South, but would avert any further plotting on the part of your family. I'm afraid to leave the spot," he affirmed, "without taking you with me. Anyway, I _can't_." His face flushed and he fairly caught his breath as he gazed at her. "I'm thinking of you day and night, every hour, every minute! If I went back without you I couldn't work. I'm just crazy about you!"

It was this outburst of feeling that just saved the day for Daniel, his cold-blooded dissection of his penurious motives in his swift lovemaking having almost turned the tide against him.

"If we marry at all," said Margaret in a matter-of-fact tone, "I agree with you that it might as well be at once."

"'If at all?' Ah!" said Daniel almost coquettishly, "that's to remind me that you haven't accepted me yet? I'm going ahead too fast, am I? My feelings ran away with me, Margaret, for the moment because it's simply unthinkable to me that you should refuse me--I mean, I could not think of life without you now that I know and love you."

"Very well, I'll marry you, Mr. Leitzel. I might as well. But if it is to be done, we shall have to have a quiet wedding, you know."

Calmly as she spoke, the colour dyed her cheeks as she realized the fatal finality of the words she uttered. Deep down in her soul, not clearly recognized by herself, was a vague sense of guilt in the thing she was doing, all her logic to the contrary notwithstanding. For every normal woman feels instinctively that the human relation which may make her a mother, if it is not a sacred and ennobling relation, must be a degrading one, and no experiences of life, however embittering, can ever wholly obliterate this profound intuition. Cynical as were Margaret's theories of love and marriage, she could never have given herself to Daniel Leitzel had she not felt goaded to it by her unfitness to earn her living, and by her sister's desire to have her away. And even these two driving circumstances could not wholly exonerate her to herself from the charge before her conscience of unworthy weakness in taking an easy way out instead of grappling with her difficulty and conquering it, as great souls, she very well knew, have ever done.

IX

It was the day after Daniel's "proposal" that, as Margaret stood before her bureau in her bedroom dressing to receive her lover, Harriet, who had been quite unable to disguise her satisfaction over the betrothal, knocked at her door and came into her room.

"Can't I help you dress, dear?" she asked kindly.

"Will you hook this thing up the back, please, Hattie?"

"Oh, but you are rash to wear this new chiffon waist, Margaret; chiffon mashes so easily, you know."

"But I'm not going out; I shall not be putting a wrap over it," said Margaret, looking at Harriet in surprise.

"I know you're not going out, but, Margaret, chiffon mashes so _easily_!"

"Well, I'll try to remember not to hold any of the children, though I'd rather mash the waist than forego that pleasure. Still, clothes are scarce and I've got no money for a trousseau----"

"Donkey! This will be your first tête-à-tête with Mr. Leitzel since your engagement, and he's quite crazy about you--and chiffon is most perishable."

Margaret looked at her blankly.

"Do you see _no_ connection between the two facts, you goose?" demanded Harriet.

"Oh!" exclaimed Margaret. "Now I see what you mean!"

"Really?"

"But, Hattie, dear, you needn't be so--so explicit."

"'Explicit!' I nearly had to draw a diagram! Look here, Margaret, you're too thin; there's no excuse for anybody's looking as thin as you do when cotton wadding is so cheap."

"Recommend it to Mr. Leitzel; he's thinner than I am."

"I came in to tell you that Walter has ordered the wedding announcements and they will be finished in ten days; you and I and Mr. Leitzel can meantime be addressing the envelopes. I've drawn up a list of names; you can look over it and see whether I've forgotten any one. You must get Mr. Leitzel's list to-day."

"Very well."

Margaret turned away to her closet to hide the quick tears that sprang to her eyes at her sister's quite cold-blooded eagerness to speed her on her way. Harriet seemed to be almost feverishly fearful that something might intervene to stop the marriage if it were not quickly precipitated.

It was when her betrothed gave her, that evening, a diamond ring, that Margaret's strongest revulsion came to her, so strong that when she had conquered it, by reminding herself again of all the arguments by which she had brought herself to this pass, she had overcome for good and all any last remaining hesitation to accept her doom.

"You may think I was very extravagant, Margaret," Daniel said, as he held her hand and slipped the beautiful jewel upon her finger. "It cost me three hundred dollars. But you see, dear, a diamond is always property; capital safely invested. I'm only too glad and thankful that I can afford to give my affianced bride a costly diamond engagement ring. Is it tight enough?" he anxiously inquired. "I'm afraid it is a little loose; you better have it made tighter; no extra charge for that, they told me at the jeweller's. You might lose it if it's loose."

Margaret had a momentary impulse to tear the ring from her finger and fling it in his face, and such impulses were so foreign to her gentle disposition that she marvelled at herself.

"I'm glad it's property, Daniel," she returned with a perfunctory facetiousness, "for if you don't use me well, I can sell out to Isaac or Israel and run off! Or, if business got dull with you, we could fall back on our diamond ring!"

"_My_ business get dull!" he laughed. It was rather delightful to know she was marrying him with so little idea of his great possessions; another proof of the fascination he had always had for ladies, according to Jennie and Sadie.

He was beginning to feel a little nervous at the thought of his sisters. Jennie, especially, would not like it that he was going ahead and getting married without consulting her. Of course, she and Sadie would both see, as soon as they came to know Margaret, that he had, even without their help, "struck a bonanza" in getting such a wife; so sweet-tempered and unselfish, so lovely looking, so healthy, such "a perfect lady," so "refined," except when she said "damn" and "devilish." He must warn her not to forget herself before his sisters--they'd never get over the shock. He had no doubt that eventually Jennie and Sadie would be as delighted with his "choice" as he was himself. He had told them so in his letter to them that day, assuring them that they would find his bride possessed of every quality they had always insisted upon in the girl he made his wife.

It did seem strange not to be able to tell them what Margaret's fortune was. He knew how eager they must be to know. He was beginning to feel very restive himself at not being enlightened on that score.

"Funny how I can't bring myself to ask her about it!" he wondered at himself for the hundredth time. "But she seems so disinterested in her love for me, how can I seem less so in mine for her? It would not look well!"

"Harriet wants you to draw up your list," Margaret here reminded him, "for the wedding announcements; she'd like to have it to-day."

"_Harriet_ wants---- Is she running this wedding?" he asked suspiciously.

"Yes, quite so. You and she and I have got to address envelopes all day to-morrow, you know."

"Very well. I have already made out my list. It took a good deal of careful and thoughtful discrimination," he said, drawing a document from his pocket and unfolding it, "though not nearly so much as it would if I were being married in New Munich and having a large wedding. Mere announcements--one doesn't have to draw the line so carefully, you know, as in the case of invitations to one's house."

"'Draw the line?'" repeated Margaret questioningly; for social caste in South Carolina, being less fluid than in Pennsylvania, her family for generations had scarcely even rubbed against people of any other status than its own; and the gradations and shades of social difference with which Daniel had wrestled in making his list was something quite outside her experiences.

"Well, you see, every one we send announcements to," Daniel elucidated his meaning, "is bound to call on you; only too glad of the chance. And, naturally, you don't want undesirable people calling on you. If you didn't return their calls, you would make enemies of them; and while I am so fortunately situated that that would not make any material difference to us, still it is better to avoid making enemies if possible."

"But--I don't understand. How do you happen to have acquaintances that are 'undesirable,' and in what sense undesirable--so much so as to make it awkward to have to return their calls?"

"Well, for instance, the clerks employed in my office. I think they may perhaps club together and give us a handsome wedding-present if we send them cards. And if they do, I suppose their wives will feel privileged to call."

"And their wives are 'undesirable?' Yes, I suppose I see what you mean. How awfully narrow our lives are, aren't they? I imagine it might be a very broadening and interesting experience to really make friends with other classes than our own. I've never had the shadow of a chance to."

Daniel's glow of pride in realizing that he was marrying a woman whose aristocratic ignorance of other classes than her own was so absolute as to make her suppose naïvely that it might be "broadening and interesting" to know such, quite counteracted the disturbing effect of this absurd suggestion. He had only to remember his sisters' long struggle for recognition and their present precarious foothold in New Munich "society" to appreciate to the full the (to him) wonderful fact that his wife and all her "kin," as they called their relatives, "could have it to say" they had always been "at the top."

That such a wife might find his sisters "undesirable" did not occur to him, his sense of his sisters' crudities being dulled by familiarity with them, and his standard of value being so largely a financial one.

"When folks call on you in New Munich, Margaret," said Daniel, "Jennie and Sadie will be a great help to you in telling you whom of your callers you must cultivate and whom you must not."

"But aside from your employees and their wives there would be only your family's friends, of course?" Margaret asked, again puzzled.

"Well, some people prominent in our church, but not in society, and a few others, may bother us some. You need not worry about it; Jennie and Sadie will separate the sheep from the goats for you," he smiled.

"You have told me so little of your people. Your sisters live in New Munich?"

"I ought to have mentioned before this, dear, that my sisters keep house for me. They will continue to live with me."

"Oh!" Margaret's heart bounded with a great relief at this information, though even to her own secret consciousness it seemed disloyal to rejoice that she was not going to be thrown alone upon the society of Daniel Leitzel; the prospect had already begun to seem rather appalling.

"No use in our setting up a separate establishment," continued Daniel; "it's so much cheaper for us all to live together, my sisters being such excellent managers."

Margaret, not gathering from this that his sisters shared with him the expense of the "establishment," but concluding, rather, that they were dependent upon him, hastened to assure him that she would not wish him, on her account, to assume the support of two households.

"To tell you the truth, Margaret, I shouldn't know how to get on without Jennie and Sadie, they understand me and all my little habits so well, and they do take such care of my comforts, which is a great thing to a man who constantly uses his brain so strenuously as I do."

Again Margaret inwardly congratulated herself that it would not devolve upon _her_ to take care of his comforts and learn all his "little habits," which occupation appeared to her a pitiable waste of a woman's life--in the case of any but a _great_ man.

"When I did it for Uncle Osmond," she reflected, "it seemed worth while because of what he was giving to the world almost up to the day of his death."

"The work of a corporation lawyer," she asked Daniel, "is it anything more than a money-making job?"

"Anything _more_?" repeated Daniel, shocked at the suggestion that it could be anything more. "Isn't that enough?"

"Dear me, no! When two women spend their lives keeping a man fit for his work, they surely want to know that his work is worth such a price; that it is benefiting society."

"Well, of course, any money-making 'job,' as you call it (I would hardly call my legal work a 'job') must benefit society; if I make money, I not only can support a family but can give to public charities, and to the church."

"There's nothing in that, Daniel; I have studied enough social and political economy to know, as you, too, certainly must know, that society has outgrown the philanthropy and charity idea; has learned to hate philanthropy and charity; people are demanding the right to earn their own way and keep their self-respect."

"I'm afraid, Margaret," said Daniel gravely, "your irreligious uncle gave you some rather unladylike ideas. However," he smiled, "my Christian influence on you, as fond of me as you are, will soon make you forget his infidel teachings. For goodness' sake, dear, don't forget yourself and repeat such atheistic thoughts before my sisters or indeed to any one in New Munich. Our best society is very critical."

It flashed upon Margaret to wonder, with a sudden sense of despair, what her uncle would have said to her marrying Daniel Leitzel.

"If I don't do it quickly, I can't hold out!" she miserably thought.

But she realized that she confronted a worse fate in the alternative of remaining with Hattie.

"How old are your sisters?" she asked.

"They are both elderly women, though as vigorous as they ever were."

Margaret told herself that she would be so much kinder to them than Hattie had ever been to her. "They shall never feel unwelcome in my home," she resolved.

"Are they your only relatives in New Munich?" she inquired.

"In New Munich, yes. But Hiram lives in Millerstown nearby."

"Your parents are not living?"

"My mother--no, my parents are not living."

"You seem not quite sure," she smiled.

Daniel coloured uncomfortably. The thought of his Mennonite step-mother gave him his first humiliating sense of inferiority to a Berkeley of Berkeley Hill. What a shock it would be to "a perfect lady" like Margaret if she ever met the old woman! He would try to avert such a stab to his self-respect.

"I suppose," he thought with some bitterness, "I can't get out of telling her about mother; she's bound to hear of her some time, and even perhaps meet her."

"I have a step-mother," he said testily.

"She lives in New Munich?"

"No, fifteen miles out in the country. We don't see much of her."

"I don't see her name here," said Margaret, glancing down the list he had given her.

"No; it won't be necessary to send her a card."

"You are not friendly with her? She was not a good step-mother to you?"