three weeks later, when margaret came to review the course of events which had strangely led to the almost unbelievable fact of her betrothal to daniel leitzel, she realized that the "turn for the worse," as she called it, had come to her upon watching mr. leitzel with harriet's children on that evening after the automobile ride which had made her spiritually ill. squatting on the floor with the three babies gathered about him, he had actually become human and tender and self-forgetful; and he had exhibited a cleverness in entertaining and fascinating the bright, eager children that had evoked her admiration and almost her liking.
she had not come downstairs until just a half-hour before dinner, and as she had entered the library, dressed in a low-necked, short-sleeved summer gown of pale pink batiste, she had noted, without much interest, mr. leitzel's countenance of vivid pleasure as, from his place on the floor, unable to rise because of the children sprawling all over him, he had gazed up at her. but when, after watching him play for a half-hour with the babies, she had presently relieved him of the youngest to give it its bottle, she really began to feel, before the ardent look he fixed upon her as she sat holding the hungry, drowsy infant to her heart, a faint stirring of her blood.
"the madonna and the child!" he had said adoringly, and margaret was astonished to find herself blushing; to discover that this man could bring the faintest warmth to her cheeks!
in the course of that evening, during dinner and later when the children had been taken to bed by harriet, and mr. leitzel was again, as on the previous night, left on her hands, she could not be indifferent to the novel experience of finding herself the object of a fixity and intensity of admiration which, from a man so self-centred, suggested the possession on her part of an unsuspected power.
even his occasional conversational faux pas did not break the peculiar spell he cast upon her by his devotion.
"have you read many of these books?" he asked her, glancing at the shelves near him. "here are about twenty books all by one man—james. astonishing! what does he find to write about to such an extent?"
"they are the works of the two jameses, the brothers henry and william, the novelist and the psychologist, you know; only, uncle osmond insisted upon cataloguing henry, also, with the psychologists."
"the james brothers? i've heard more about jesse than about the other two. jesse was an outlaw, you remember. the other two, then, were respectable?"
"'respectable?' henry and william james? i'm sure they would hate to be considered so!"
daniel nodded knowingly. "bad blood all through, no doubt."
"yes," said margaret gravely, "of the three i prefer jesse. he at least was not a psychologist, nor did he write in english past finding out! by the way, i remember uncle osmond used to say," she added, a reminiscent dreaminess in her eyes which held daniel's breathless gaze, "that only in a very primitive or provincial society was a regard for respectability paramount, and that in an individual of an upper class it bespoke either assinine stupidity or damned hypocrisy."
daniel started and stared until his eyes popped, to hear that soft, drawling voice say "damned," even though quoting. why, one would think a nice girl would be embarrassed to own a relative who used profane language, instead of flaunting it!
"wasn't your uncle a christian?" he asked dubiously.
"oh, no!" she laughed.
now what was there to laugh at in so serious a question? daniel was finding miss berkeley's conversation extremely upsetting.
"he died unsaved?" he asked gravely.
"i suppose a medi?val theologian would have said he did."
"i trust he didn't influence you, miss berkeley!"
"but of course, i got lots of ideas from him, for which i'm very thankful. if it had not been for his interesting mind, i could never have lived so long with his devilish disposition, or, as he used to call it, his 'hell of a temper.'" ("if he's going to fall in love with me," margaret was saying to herself, as she saw his shocked countenance, "he's got to know the worst—i won't deceive him.")
"i'm addicted to only two vices, mr. leitzel: profanity and beer."
daniel smiled faintly, she looked so childishly innocent. "you are different from any girl i ever met. as a conversationalist especially. new munich girls never talk the way you do."
"you mean they are not profane?"
"you're only joking, aren't you?" asked daniel anxiously. "i didn't refer merely to your using oaths, but the ideas you occasionally express; that, for instance, about 'respectability,' i'm sure i never heard our new munich young ladies say things like that. however," he added, his face softening and beaming, "nothing you could do or say could ever counteract for me the impression you made upon me as you sat there to-night holding that baby!"
"you are very fond of children, aren't you, mr. leitzel?" she asked graciously.
"well, i should say! i'd like to have a large family, even if it is expensive!"
"so should i," said margaret frankly; and daniel had a moment's doubt as to the maidenly modesty of this reply, much as he approved of the sentiment.
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.
