Her Husband's Purse

by Helen Reimensnyder Martin

"If Margaret doesn't complain, I don't see why you need, dear."

"She'd never complain—she never thinks of herself. Your Uncle Osmond took care not to let her form the habit! For that very reason we should think for her a bit, Hattie, dear. I say, we've got to let Margaret in for some young society."

"When I can't afford to keep up my social end, let alone hers? And if we should spend money that way for Margaret, where would the children come in?"

"Oh, pshaw!" said Walter impatiently. "You're bluffing! You care no more about the money side of it than I do. You're not a Yankee tight-wad! Margaret need not live the life of a nursemaid because we're not rich, any more than you do, honey. It's absurd! And it's all wrong. What you're really afraid of, Hat, is that if she went about more, you'd have to stay at home now and then with your own babies. Eh, dear?"

But he was warned by the look in his wife's face that he must go no further. He was aware of the fact that Harriet was distinctly jealous of his too manifest liking for Margaret. Being something of a philosopher, he had felt occasionally, when his sister-in-law had seemed to him more than usually charming and irresistible, that a wife's instinctive jealousy was really a Providential safeguard to hold a man in check.

He wondered often why he found Margaret so tremendously appealing, when undoubtedly his wife, though ten years older than her sister, was much the better looking of the two. He was not subtle enough to divine that it was the absolutely feminine quality of Margaret's personality, the penetrating, all-pervasive womanliness which one felt in her presence, which expressed itself in her every movement, in every curve of her young body—it was this which so poignantly appealed to his strong virility that at times he felt he could not bear her presence in the house.

He would turn from her and look upon his wife's much prettier face and finer figure, only to have the fire of his blood turn lukewarm. For he recognized, with fatal clearness, that though Harriet had the beautiful, clear-cut features and look of high breeding characteristic of the Berkeley race, her inexpressive countenance betrayed a commonplace mind and soul, while Margaret, lacking the Berkeley beauty, did have the family look and air of breeding, which gave her, with her countenance of intelligence and sensitiveness, a marked distinction; and Walter Eastman was a man not only of temperament, but of the poetic imagination that idealizes the woman with whom he is at the time in love.

"The man that marries Margaret will never fall out of love with her—she's magnetic to her finger-tips! What's more, there's something in her worth loving—worth loving forever!"

At this stage of his reflections he usually pulled himself up short, uncomfortably conscious of his disloyalty. Harriet, he knew, was wholly loyal to him, proud of him, thinking him all that any woman could reasonably expect a husband to be—a gentleman of old family, well set up physically, and indeed good-looking, chivalrous to his wife, devoted to his children, temperate in his habits, upright and honourable. She did not even criticise his natural indolence, which, rather than lack of brains or opportunity, kept his law practice and his earnings too small for the needs of his growing family; but Harriet preferred to do without money rather than have her husband be a vulgar "hustler," like a "Yankee upstart."

It was this same indolence of Walter's, rather than want of force of character, which led him to stand by passively and see his sister-in-law constantly imposed upon, as he distinctly felt that she was, though he realized that Margaret herself, dear, sweet girl, never seemed conscious of it. Her unexpected outburst at dinner to-night had shocked and hurt him to the quick. He was sure that something really outrageous on Harriet's part must have caused it. Yet rather than "raise a row" with Harriet, he acquiesced in her decision to leave Margaret at home. It must be said in justice to him that had his astute wife not kept him in ignorance of their Aunt Virginia's invitation to Margaret he would undoubtedly have taken a stand in the matter. Harriet, carefully calculating the limit of his easy forbearance, knew better than to tell him of that invitation; and she could safely count upon Margaret not to put her in the wrong with Walter.