Chapter 15

Ten minutes later he and Margaret sat facing each other from either side of his flat-topped office-desk.

Miss Hamilton's conscience-clear self-possession as she had passed through his office to go to her luncheon, and his wife's equally guiltless aspect as she had greeted him with cheerful affection, had been a little disarming, it is true, to his determined purpose. But Daniel was not readily diverted from a line he had decided upon, and Margaret's easy indifference to his expressed wish as to her associating with Miss Hamilton had aroused his obstinacy. And Daniel's obstinacy was a snag to be reckoned with.

So, seated opposite her at his desk, he had expounded to her very forcibly his reasons for prohibiting any social relations whatever with any one of his office staff.

"And now," he concluded his harangue, "I lay my command upon you, my dear."

"Oh, but, my dear!" laughed Margaret, "that's rather absurd, you know! Now listen, Daniel. If you warned me against Miss Hamilton as a person who was immoral or illiterate or ill-bred, I should of course see the reasonableness of your objection to her. But when she is really superior in every respect to every one of the people you do want me to be intimate with: better born, better bred, more intelligent; when my intimacy with her is going to mean to me more than I have words to express—a close friendship with a congenial and stimulating mind and character—you can't expect me to give it up for such reasons as you offer me, Daniel, chief among them being that she works for her living. But in the South we are so used, since the war, to seeing gentlewomen work for their living, and we are so unused to meeting, socially, people like the Ocksreiders and the Millers, who tell me (one of them did) that her house is 'het by steam' and who say, 'Outen the light'—well, dear, you see," she concluded, rising, "it is ridiculous to discuss it. Let us go home to luncheon."

"Sit down, Margaret."

"But I'm famishing, Daniel. I'm weak with hunger. You'll have to take me home in a taxicab if you don't take me soon."

"Sit down! You've got to promise to obey me in this matter, Margaret."

"Oh!" her voice rippled with laughter, "this is the twentieth century A.D., not B.C., Daniel. You're mixed in your dates! And you seem to forget you married me, you didn't adopt me."

"You must drop at once any further relations with my secretary."

"But, dear," she exclaimed in surprise, "haven't I yet made it clear to you that I don't intend to?"

"I am accustomed to being obeyed, Margaret!"

"By whom? Your wives?"

"Come, come, I want your promise."

"Daniel," she plead with him, "please don't be so tiresome! I am sure that you, clever lawyer that you are, must recognize that my position is quite impregnable and yours weak and indefensible, asking me to be friends with people who 'outen the light' and to cut one with whom I can have such improving conversations as that to which you ignominiously listened just now! Why didn't you honourably close your door? Could you understand our deep remarks, Daniel?"

"I'm waiting for your promise, Margaret."

Again Margaret rose. "I'm hungry and I'm going home."

"Margaret," said Daniel incredulously, "surely you are not deliberately refusing what I ask of you?"

"As surely as I'd refuse to walk a tight-rope at your behest, my lord."

"You defy me?" he asked quietly, his lips white.

It was her turn, now, to look incredulous. "But, Daniel, how can you take it to heart like this? How can you suppose yourself better qualified than I am to choose my friends? Next thing," she laughed, "you'll be telling me what books I may not read!"

"Do you intend to obey me?"

"I hope I know my wifely duty too well to spoil you, my dear. 'Obey' you indeed!" She tweaked the tip of his nose derisively.

"You will obey me, Margaret, or——" He paused helplessly.

"Obey me!" she mocked him, "or die, woman! Well, Daniel, if it comes to force"—she looked at her pink finger nails—"I can scratch!"

She suddenly bent and kissed his forehead. "Do come home!"

"When I've had your promise."

"Daniel, a woman in these days who 'obeys' her husband ought to be ostracized, or arrested and confined in an institution for dangerous lunatics!"

Daniel looked at her meditatively. "I'm certainly up against it!" he was saying to himself. "I could be firm against tears or temper; but when she just jokes about it and laughs at me and goes on doing as she pleases, what can I do with her?"

"Margaret," he said, "I've never quarrelled with any one in my life, but," he added, a little icy gleam in his eyes that did chill her for the moment, "I've always had my own way!"

"Which has, of course, been dreadfully bad for you. It's well you've married a wife that is going to be very firm with you!"

Daniel bit his lip to keep from laughing. Not for an instant did he think of yielding. The difficulty of the situation served only to aggravate his obstinacy. There was more than one way of getting a thing, and Daniel was not at all above resorting to cunning. Half the successes of his career had been the result of his cunning. He did not call it that; he named it subtlety, far-sightedness.

"I want to ask you something, Margaret; sit down."

She sighed and dropped again into the chair opposite him.

"You bought your new dress—frock—gown, this morning?"

She shook her head, too weary and hungry to speak.

"You didn't?"

"I told you I didn't intend to get anything."

"But we all told you to! I wish you to!"

"Can't get anything in New Munich. Don't suppose you'd want me to go to Philadelphia or Lancaster just now, for a gown, with the expense of the party on your hands?"

"That would be an unnecessary extravagance."

"I shall buy no clothes in this village while I have what I have."

"And that twenty dollars I gave you?"

"What about it?"

"I gave it to you for a gown."

"I know you did. But I told you last Saturday I didn't want one."

"Did you cash the check?"

"Yes."

"Where is the money?"

"Spent."

"What! Spent for what?"

"Oh, Daniel, you busybody! Well, it was spent for kid gloves and presents for Hattie's babies from you and me. We needed the gloves; I didn't need a gown; you seemed anxious to have me squander twenty dollars, so I sent six dollars' worth of things to the babies in Charleston."

"Without consulting me!"

"But there was nothing to consult about. And you seemed so determined to have me spend twenty dollars."

"For a frock."

Margaret flopped her head wearily on her hand and did not answer.

"You say 'we' needed the gloves. Did you buy me some? I don't need any."

"I bought some for Jennie and Sadie," she answered mechanically.

Daniel's face turned red. "What did you spend on them?"

"I don't know—twice four-fifty. You multiply it."

"Nine dollars for gloves for them! Good heavens! But, Margaret, they have their own money."

"That's nice of them—I mean for them. Ah, Daniel, won't you come home?"

"The time has come, Margaret, when you and I must come to an understanding about your—your income."

"Won't it do after dinner?"

"It is a matter for private discussion and we are here alone now. Let us settle it. In the first place," he said impressively, "it is time that I took over the management of your finances. Does Walter have them in charge?"

"Daniel," said Margaret gravely, a faint colour coming to her cheeks, "Walter surely did not give you to understand that I had any money?"

"No. You did."

"I? How?"

"You said you were one of your uncle's heirs."

"Only to the old homestead, Berkeley Hill. Nothing else."

They looked at each other across the table, Daniel's small, keen eyes meeting steadily her faintly troubled ones.

"Did you think I had money, Daniel?"

"What is the homestead supposed to be worth and how many heirs are there?"

"Hattie and I own it. I don't know what it is worth. It is awfully out of repair, you know."

"But Walter pays you rent, of course, for your share in it?"

"Oh, no, he couldn't afford to."

"Couldn't afford to? When they live like millionaires! Oriental rugs, a butler to wait on the table, solid silver, and expensive china—anyway, it looked expensive. And they can't afford to pay you rent?"

"All those things were inherited, Daniel, along with the place, the butler included."

"Then you own those rugs and that silver and china?"

"Jointly with my sister, yes."

"But that's property, Margaret. How, then, are you receiving your share?"

"I'm not receiving it."

"Why not? I hate that slipshod Southern way of doing business! You ought, of course, to be drawing an income from your half of that place."

"But it yields no income."

"Isn't any of the land cultivated?"

"The land consists of two square miles of woodland about the house. Walter says the place, as it is, couldn't even be rented; and none of us have any money to spend in fixing it up; so there you are. It's a home for Hattie's family, that's all."

"Gracious!"

"Is it a shock to you to find me penniless?" asked Margaret gravely. "Wouldn't you have married me if you had known?"

She was acutely conscious of the fact that since she had married him for a home, she certainly could not judge him very critically if he had married her for a supposed fortune.

Daniel looked at her speculatively. Would he have married her if he had known? Well, he was pretty certain that he would have; that at that time, incredible as it might seem, her charm for him outmeasured any dower a wife might have brought him. But now? Did he rue his "blind and headlong" (so he considered it) yielding to her fascination?

His eyes swept over her appraisingly, over her dark hair, her soft dark eyes, the curve of her red lips, her broad, boyish shoulders, her fine hands clasped on the top of the desk, and he knew that he adored her. Not even in the face of the shock he felt at learning of her pennilessness, and on the head of her audacious defiance of his wishes, could he regret for an instant that she was his—his very own. And it suddenly came to him, with a force that sent the blood to his face, that her being comparatively penniless (for of course he'd insist on getting something out of that Berkeley Hill estate), her present absolute dependence upon him made her all the more his own, his property, subject to his will. If she were penniless, he held her in his power. It was with the primitive instinct of a savage that he gloated over his possession, the most precious of all his possessions.

"I shall teach her this much about the value of money (of which she seems as ignorant as a child): that the price of her board and clothing is obedience to me!"

"Yes, Margaret," he at length replied, "I would have married you if I had known you were penniless. I married you because I loved you."

She did not tell him that there he had the advantage of her. She envied him his clear conscience in the matter. A shade of respect for him came into her countenance as she looked at him, a respect she could not feel for herself on the same score.

He took a small blank book from his desk and a crisp ten-dollar bill from his purse and laid them before her.

"This is the first of the month, I shall give you ten dollars a month for pocket money, and you will keep an account of your expenditures in this book and show it to me at the first of each month. Anything you need to buy which this allowance won't cover you can ask me about. You seem to know nothing of the value of money, and it's time you learned. I can't trust you with more than a small sum, since you at once go off and squander it on other people instead of spending it for yourself—or for what you were told to spend it for. No more of that, my dear! Your allowance is for your own needs. When you want to make gifts, you consult me."

She dropped the money into her bag, but she did not pick up the blank book.

Daniel took it up and held it out to her. She hesitated, but dreading further discussion with him if she informed him that she had no intention of accounting to him, like a school-girl, for her use of ten dollars a month, she tucked the book also into her bag.

"You must sign over to me the power of attorney to collect rent from your brother-in-law for your half of that estate. I shall look into the matter, and if I feel that the property justifies it, I'll expend some money on it, and then we can rent it at a high rate, too high, probably, for Walter's means. He'll have to move out and live elsewhere."

Again she did not contradict him, while she privately determined to write to Walter herself that very day and warn him that she was not a party to any suggestions which Daniel might make as to Berkeley Hill.

And Daniel was privately telling himself that it would not be any time at all before he would contrive to get over into his own hands that entire estate.

"Also," he said to her, "I shall claim for you one half of all the contents of the house, the books, pictures, china, silver, furniture——"

"Butler," inserted Margaret.

"Well, we'll leave them the butler," grinned Daniel. "He appeared to be more out of repair than anything else on the place."

The bare suggestion of bringing their family heirlooms into such a setting as that of Daniel's New Munich house seemed to Margaret like horrible sacrilege.

"I'd like to see anybody make Harriet strip Berkeley Hill of half its belongings!" she smiled.

"But if half its belongings are yours?"

"Uncle Osmond never meant them to be taken from the old home."

"His will doesn't say so, does it?"

"Of course not. He gave us credit for a few decent feelings."

Daniel regarded her in perplexity. How was it that she could weakly let herself be so absurdly imposed upon by her sister and brother-in-law as to her own property, all she had in the world, and yet, when it came to a matter like this of his secretary, be so hard to manage by a man of his resolution?

"He gave you credit, too, it seems, for having no business sense. Well, fortunately for you, you've got me to take care of that end for you now. I'll make that estate yield something to your sister's advantage as well as yours. And now," he concluded, rising, slipping into his overcoat, and picking up his hat, "just one more word: understand, my dear, that when you act like a naughty, disobedient, small girl"—he punctuated his words by tapping her shoulder with his derby—"you will be treated like one and have your allowance cut off. Eh? So I trust we'll hear no more of this nonsense about my secretary."

"I trust so, too."

"Good!"

"But," added Margaret as they went forth together to the street, "I don't just see how you're going to get out of supporting your legal wife, so long as I consent to let you support me."

"You 'consent' to let me? Now what do you mean by that nonsense? Some of that 'Feminist' talk, is it, that Miss Hamilton was trying to stuff you with?"

"Never mind," said Margaret. "I won't explain what I mean, for if I do, you'll begin to argue with me; and I refuse to argue any more about anything until I have had a good, square meal."

And so it was that in spite of the revelations of the past hour in Daniel's office, and the talk so illuminating to them both, Jennie and Sadie had the surprise of hearing them come into the house together, laughing and talking as though nothing whatever had occurred to call for their brother's solemn displeasure with his heedless and irresponsible wife.