Chapter 28

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!"

"If I were not taking up this case with you this morning, Leitzel, Margaret would herself, I am confident, put it into the hands of another lawyer, who might not be so interested as I am in keeping it out of the newspapers. Margaret would probably bungle the thing and get herself into a mess of trouble, so I've decided I'd better do it for her and do it with a minimum of fuss and worry for her."

"She has told you she was going to put it into a lawyer's hands?"

"She has told me nothing; at least she thinks she has told me nothing."

"What do you mean by that—that she thinks she has told you nothing?"

"I've said that I've surmised the facts I hold."

"Well, your 'surmises' are all wrong! Margaret would not set a lawyer to bringing suit against me! She's not quite a fool! She wouldn't deliberately disgrace the father of her children!"

"She would consider, rather, her children's shame in inheriting tainted money."

"I'll have her down here"—Daniel rose suddenly, though his knees shook under him—"and put it to her, and you'll see whether she is loyal to her husband or not!"

"Wait!" Walter checked him. "You will have her here of course if you like, but don't you think she's been subjected to about enough unpleasantness and nervous strain since yesterday afternoon? I can give you the answer she'd have for you: you will restore to your step-mother her third, or she will first institute a suit to make you do it and then (as so drastic a measure as that will make your living together rather unendurable) she will come home to Charleston with me."

"And the twins?"

"Would of course come with her."

"And you'd support them?" sneered Daniel.

"Margaret would be amply able to support them. She wanted to postpone telling you what it was that brought me North to see her just at this time, but I persuaded her this morning to let me tell you at once. It was this: a later will of her Uncle Osmond's has been found, in a volume of Kant's 'Critique,' giving Margaret an annual income of five thousand dollars. As the trustees of the estate had not yet begun the work of founding their free-thought college, the matter was easily adjusted. Uncle Osmond's change of heart, he states in a note, was brought about by a talk he had with Margaret one night in which he discussed his will with her and she pointed out to him that having given to him those years of her life in which a girl might prepare herself for a career, or at least for self-support, she would, if he left her dowerless, be stranded high and dry. So the old curmudgeon drew up a new will giving her a comfortable income, had it witnessed by two psychologists from two Western universities who called on him one day, stuck it into a damned old work on philosophy that no one would ever dream of looking into except by accident, and so two years and a half passed by before it was discovered."

Under the double shock of being threatened in one moment with a lawsuit that would rob him and his sisters and brother of a large part of their income from their coal lands, and in the next moment learning the joyful news that his wife was heiress to an annual income of five thousand dollars, Daniel felt weak, almost helpless.

He rallied after a few moments sufficiently to suggest feebly that he would compromise in the case of his step-mother: give her a comfortable income for the rest of her life.

"For you see," he reasoned, "after all, the land was my own mother's, and my step-mother has no moral right to it."

"No use for you and me to discuss the moral values of anything, Leitzel," said Walter; "our points of view, as I've said before, being too widely different. So we'll stick to the legal aspect, please."

"Well, then, look at the matter practically. My step-mother would have no use for the large income she would receive from one third of the estate. Her needs are too simple. It would simply be wasted."

"That's a question for her, not for her lawyer. The more she has, the better her sons and daughters will treat her, I guess, human nature being what it is!"

"What's more," argued Daniel, "she'd be under the necessity of making a will, and at her time of life and in her state of health, that would worry and tax her, and quite unnecessarily. I can settle a nice income upon her that will more than cover all her simple, modest needs."

"And hold it over her constantly that she is beholden to your generosity! Your tender consideration that she shall not be worried with the making of a will does credit to your heart! But you've let her be worried for the past decade with impending starvation or the poorhouse!"

"And you want to tell me," Daniel burst out, "that Margaret hasn't talked to you!"

"Of 'a friend' of hers 'out West.' Of course I saw right through that."

"So that," said Daniel bitterly, "was what that long letter was about that I saw her writing to you one night, when she threw dust in my eyes by saying she had 'a little surprise' for me up her sleeve!"

"Aha!" laughed Walter. "Margaret always was cute!"

"'Cute!' You call it 'cute,' to be underhanded with her own husband; to plot to rob her own children of a large part of their inheritance; to act in every possible way she can devise against my interests and those of my family! And don't you see," he tackled another line of argument, "that it will be extremely difficult to avert a public scandal if we actually make over to my step-mother all this money? Whereas a compromise——"

"The only rule I know for averting scandals," said Walter, "is to live honestly. Yes, it may cause comment, but not so much as a lawsuit would cause."

"You won't consider a compromise?"

"Not for an instant. Except this," Walter added, lifting his hand; "we will waive a claim for the accrued profits of past years."

There was a long silence between them, Daniel nervously tapping his foot on the fender before which he sat, and Walter lounging back in his chair, looking so lazy and indifferent, it was difficult for Daniel to believe that this man held in his hands the power to force a man like himself, rich, influential, secure, to give up a large part of his annual income.

Well, there seemed to be no use in prolonging the present interview; Daniel rose slowly to bring it to an end.

"There seems nothing more to be said, Mr. Eastman."

"But I must see this thing through, Mr. Leitzel, before I return to the South, and I've got to return soon, so you must let me have my answer not later than to-morrow. That will give you time to see your brother and sisters."

"Also time to see my step-mother, who, I happen to know, will not permit you to bring suit. She will consent to a compromise, and an easy one."

"You think so?" Walter smiled confidently, though on this point he did not feel confident. "But whatever your step-mother may consent to, your wife will not consent to a compromise. She hasn't the sort of conscience that compromises. And she considers this her concern and her children's. I am quite sure that if you don't make full restitution to your step-mother, Margaret will go home with me, which, from what I have witnessed of her life here, I think may be the best thing she can do."

"Her life here," said Daniel coldly, "is none of your business."

He turned away abruptly, as though unable to bear more, and walked quickly from the room.

"And from beginning to end," said Walter to himself as he yawned and stretched himself, "I was guessing! Wasn't absolutely sure that the case was Leitzel's step-mother's! Well," he concluded as he rose lazily and strolled out of the building, "I'm enjoying my visit up here quite a lot!"

But as he went through the streets to the Cocalico Hotel, his face was very sober.

"To think of a woman like Margaret being tied up for life to a little spider like that! Why didn't I see it when he came a-courting her! Ah, well," he drew a long breath, "I'll do my darndest to make it up to her! I'll see the poor old Leitzel woman myself this morning, and I'll get in my good strokes there before Dan Leitzel gets near her."