Chapter 26

Margaret bent all her energies to readjusting the household—her household now—in preparation for Walter's visit, to which she could, under these changed conditions, look forward with eager pleasure. But here again she ran upon a snag.

"Every cloud has a silver lining," Daniel sentimentally remarked, preparatory to the discussion of the new furniture necessary to replace what his sisters had removed. "You can now have your own things sent up from the Berkeley Hill home. Half of all that old mahogany, silver, rugs, books, and pictures. I couldn't afford to buy such valuable furniture as you've got there. And solid silver, too."

"Strip Berkeley Hill, my sister's home! and bring those things into this house!" Margaret almost gasped. "But don't you see, Daniel, this isn't the sort of house for old colonial furniture? It would be incongruous. What this house needs is early Victorian."

"The freightage on your things won't come to nearly so much as new furniture would cost, even though we bought the grade of stuff the girls had here. And you can tell your sister Harriet that I'll pay for the crating and packing. It isn't right that I should, for they've had the use of your things all this time, but you can tell her I'm perfectly willing to do that. Or, never mind writing to her; we can arrange it with Walter when he comes."

So strong was Margaret's sentiment for Berkeley Hill that it would have hurt her as much to see its familiar furnishings in this alien setting in New Munich as it would have hurt Harriet to strip her home. She did not, however, pursue the discussion with Daniel. Walter would be privately informed as to her wishes in the matter; and the places left bare by Jennie's and Sadie's departure would remain bare until Daniel saw fit to buy furniture to fill them.

Meantime, she managed, though with difficulty, to prepare, with what furniture she had, a comfortable room for her brother-in-law.

"If Daniel were poor, I'd feel I ought to help him out, painful as it would be to me to see any part of Berkeley Hill installed here. But he doesn't need to be helped out. Far from it!"

Daniel assumed Walter's visit to mean that at last this slow-moving Southerner had got round to the point of noticing his insistent demands for a settlement of Margaret's share in Berkeley Hill. So he awaited his arrival with much complacency.

Walter Eastman reached New Munich at ten o'clock one Wednesday morning and Margaret met him at the station. By the time Daniel came home to luncheon at one o'clock the "important Berkeley Hill business" of which Walter had telegraphed was entirely concluded between him and Margaret, as were also a few other items of importance.

"For the present, Walter, I prefer not to tell Daniel about this news you have brought me," she suggested at the end of their interview, which, by the way, found her rather white and agitated.

"But of course you understand, my dear," returned Walter, "that you can't keep him in ignorance of it long?"

"Of course not. Just a few days. Perhaps not so long."

"Any special reason for deferring such a pleasant announcement?"

"I want to spring it on him as a palliative, a sort of compensation, for something else which won't prove so pleasant."

"Ah, by the way," said Walter with apparent irrelevancy, crossing his long legs as they sat together on a sofa of the now very bare sitting-room, "what was the meaning, Margaret, of all that bluff you put up on me about Western gold mines owned by a friend of yours who thought perhaps his step-mother had a legal claim, and so forth. Quite a case you made out!"

"It's a true case. I'm much interested in it. And Daniel's clerk happened to know that the land was vested in the step-mother's husband at the time of his death and that he died without a will. What I want you to tell me now is this: can any power on earth keep that widow from her one third interest in those coal—gold mines, if she claim her share?"

"No, if she has never signed away her rights."

"She hasn't done that."

"You say your husband's clerk was working on the case? Then it's the case of a client of his?"

"Yes, the case of a client of his."

"And a friend of yours, you said?"

"Yes. His clerk wasn't exactly working on it; she simply told me, when I asked her, that she knew the mining land to have been vested absolutely in the husband."

"And you wrote me that the step-mother has not had her share because she's too ignorant to claim it, and that she's in want. That right?"

"Yes."

"I should say, then, no mercy should be shown those who have defrauded her. They should be made to pay up, especially as it was this old woman's hard labour and self-sacrifice in the first place (so you wrote) that saved the home and land for the family."

"Tell me, Walter, dear, how shall the old woman set about getting her dues?"

"Simply hire a lawyer to bring suit."

"But her religion forbids her to go to law."

"Then you're stumped. Nothing to be done."

"But I've learned that sometimes the New Mennonites allow some one else to bring suit for them."

"Aha!" laughed Walter. "All right. Let her have her lawyer bring suit for her."

"Can he surely recover her share?"

"Surely, if all the facts you've given me are correct, her share can be reclaimed without a struggle."

"I'm certain that all the facts I've given you are correct."

"You seem to be certain of a good deal about these far-distant acquaintances of whom I never heard, Margaret."

Margaret cast down her eyes, her face flushing; but after an instant: "Thank you, Walter," she said. "I'm very much indebted to you. One more favour: kindly refrain from mentioning this case of the silver mines to Daniel."

"'Silver' mines?"

"Gold mines. Ah, here he comes now! And not a word, remember, of the news you've brought me!"

"All right, my dear."

"And as for the furnishings of Berkeley Hill; sit tight and don't argue. Daniel always comes round to my way in the end, but it takes a bit of time and diplomacy."

"Poor Daniel, he's like the rest of us, henpecked lot that we are!" Walter teased her. "He comes round to your way because he's got to; no escape! But if I know your Pennsylvania Dutch Daniel, Margaret, and his letters to me have been very self-revealing, he wishes sometimes that the good old wife-beating days were with us yet!"

"No, Daniel isn't like that; he isn't a bit brutal—at least in the sense of rough. He's very gentle, really."

Daniel, now knowing his brother-in-law to be an impecunious and, by Leitzel standards, rather an incapable, unimportant sort of a man, manifested in his curt greeting of him the small esteem he felt for him.

But he found, during his noon hour of respite, that his repeated efforts to talk business with this discounted individual were very skilfully parried.

"We have a pretty big bill, Eastman, against that South Carolina estate," he began over his soup. "A whole year's rent, you know, for Margaret's half of the house, land, and furniture. But Margaret is willing to waive that, in fact, quite willing, and I concur in her willingness. We shan't press that. We'll let that go, especially now that you've come to settle up. If you'd waited much longer, we might not have been so willing to waive the year's rent. Eh, Margaret?"

"Please, Daniel!" Margaret murmured, hot with shame as she saw Walter's crimson embarrassment and rising anger.

"Well, of course, I don't mean," said Daniel, who considered himself a remarkably tactful man, "that Margaret would have gone so far as to bring suit. Not against her own sister, certainly. Nor would I, either, sanction such an extreme measure. But right is right, you know, and law is law."

"I've got a case on my hands," retorted Walter, avoiding Margaret's eye, "of a widow who for over thirty years has received no rent for her third share of some mines—oh, silver mines."

"You ought to draw a big fee for a case like that!" exclaimed Daniel, his eyes gleaming. "A regular big haul; enough to set you up for life! Silver mines! Well, I should say!"

"I don't expect to get much out of it."

"You'll never get much out of anything," grumbled Daniel, "the way you do business!"

"Sometimes, however, business men are so extremely devoted to their own interests, to the exclusion of all human appeal and all natural ties, that their 'vaulting ambition o'erleaps itself.'"

"Ah, Shakespeare!" nodded Daniel. "Very aptly quoted. Yes, but the prudent, astute business man looks ahead and on all sides before he 'vaults.' I've never taken one hasty, ill-considered step in my life. And look at the result! I've a—a very comfortable living," he concluded, with a furtive glance at his wife.

"The modern rule for getting rich," Walter, having quite recovered his equanimity, casually remarked, "seems to be to skin other people."

"Ah, but you go about it too clumsily, my friend!" returned Daniel, grinning. "Don't try to skin people who have all the law and, I may say, all the brains on their side!"

Walter stared. "I try to skin people!"

"Well, it wouldn't be very civil of me, would it, when you are my guest at my own table, to accuse you of trying to skin my wife and me of her half of Berkeley Hill? I hope I am a man of too much tact to commit a breach of hospitality and etiquette like that! But this I will say——"

Margaret, however, seeing her husband to-day with Walter's eyes, was so swept with shame that she could not endure it. "Daniel!" she interposed, fearing that Walter, with Southern heat, would rise and slay her husband, "do let me enjoy Walter for one day without bothering about business, won't you? Wait until to-night to talk things out."

"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.