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Sturdy Oak, The

<h2> CHAPTER IV. BY DOROTHY CANFIELD </h2> Genevieve Remington sat in her pretty drawing-room and watched the hour hand of the clock slowly approach five. Five was a sacred hour in her day. At five George left his office, turned off the business-current with a click and turned on, full-voltage, the domestic-affectionate. Genevieve often told her girl friends that she only began really to live after five, when George was restored to her. She assured them the psychical connection between George and herself was so close that, sitting alone in her drawing-room, she could feel a tingling thrill all over when the clock struck five and George emerged from his office downtown. On the afternoon in question she received her five o'clock electric thrill promptly on time, although history does not record whether or not George walked out from his office at that moment. With all due respect for the world-shaking importance of Mr. Remington's movements, it must be stated that history had, on that afternoon, other more important events to chronicle. As the clock struck five, the front doorbell rang. Marie, the maid, went to open the door. Genevieve adjusted the down-sweeping, golden-brown tress over her right eye, brushed an invisible speck from the piano, straightened a rose in a vase, and after these traditionally bridal preparations, waited with a bride's optimistic smile the advent of a caller. But it was Marie who appeared at the door, with a stricken face of horror. "Mrs. Remington! Mrs. Remington!" she whispered loudly. "They've come to stay. The men are getting their trunks down from the wagon." "Who has come to stay? Where?" queried the startled bride. "The two ladies who came to call yesterday!" "Oh!" said the relieved Genevieve. "There's some mistake, of course. If it's Cousin Emelene and Mrs.——" She advanced into the hall and was confronted by two burly men with a very large trunk between them. "Which room?" said one of them in a bored and insolent voice. "Oh, you must have come to the wrong house," Genevieve assured them with her pretty, friendly smile. She was so happy and so convinced of the essential rightness of a world which had produced George Remington that she had a friendly smile for every one, even for unshaven men who kept their battered derby hats on their heads, had viciously smelling cigars in their mouths, and penetrated to her sacred front hall with trunks which belonged somewhere else. "Isn't this G. L. Remington's house?" inquired one of the men, dropping his end of the trunk and consulting a dirty slip of paper. "Yes, it is," admitted Genevieve, thrilling at the thought that it was also hers. "This is the place all right, then," said the man. He heaved up his end of the trunk again, and said once more, "Which room?" The repetition fell a little ominously on Genevieve's ear. What on earth could be the matter? She heard voices outside and craning her soft white neck, she saw Cousin Emelene, with her gray kitten under one arm and a large suitcase in her other hand, coming up the steps. There was a beatific expression in her gentle, faded eyes, and her lips were quivering uncertainly. When she caught sight of Genevieve's sweet face back of the bored expressmen, she gave a little cry, ran forward, set down her suitcase and clasped her young cousin in her arms. "Oh Genevieve dear, that noble wonderful husband of yours! What have you done to deserve such a man... out of this Age of Gold!" This was a sentiment after Genevieve's own heart, but she found it rather too vague to meet the present somewhat tense situation. Cousin Emelene went on, clasping her at intervals, and talking very fast. "I can hardly believe it! Now that my time of trial is all over I don't mind telling you that I was growing embittered and cynical. All those phrases my dear mother had brought me to believe, the sanctity of the home, the chivalrous protection of men, the wicked folly of women who leave the home to engage in fierce industrial struggle."... At about this point the expressmen set the trunk down, put their hands on their hips, cocked their hats at a new angle and waited in gloomy ennui for the conversation to stop. Cousin Emelene flowed on, her voice unsteady with a very real emotion. "See, dear, you must not blame me for my lack of faith... but see how it looked to me. There I was, as womanly a woman as ever breathed, and yet I had no home to be sanctified, I had never had a bit of chivalrous protection from any man. And with the New Haven stocks shrinking from one day to the next, the way they do, it looked as though I would either have to starve or engage in the wicked, unwomanly folly of earning my own living. Do you know, dear Genevieve, I had almost come to the point—you know how the suffragists do keep banging away at their points—I almost wondered if perhaps they were right and if men really mean those things about protection and support in place of the vote.... And then George's splendid, noble-spirited article appeared, and a kind friend interpreted it for me and told what it really meant, for me! Oh, Genevieve."... The tears rose to her mild eyes, her gentle, flat voice faltered, she took out a handkerchief hastily. "It seemed too good to be true," she said brokenly into its folds. "I've longed all my life to be protected, and now I'm going to be!" "Which room, please?" said the expressman. "We gotta be goin' on." Genevieve pinched herself hard, jumped and said "ouch." Yes, she was awake, all right! "Oh, Marie, will you please get Hanna a saucer of milk?" said Cousin Emelene now, seeing the maid's round eyes glaring startled from the dining-room door. "And just warm it a little bit, don't scald it. She won't touch it if there's the least bit of a scum on it. Just take that ice-box chill off. Here, I'll go with you this time. Since we're going to live here now, you'll have to do it a good many times, and I'd better show you just how to do it right." She disappeared, leaving a trail of caressing baby-talk to the effect that she would take good care of muvver's ittie bittie kittie. She left Genevieve for all practical purposes turned to stone. She felt as though she were stone, from head to foot, and she could open her mouth no more than any statue when, in answer to the next repetition, very peremptory now, of "Which room?" a voice as peremptory called from the open front door, "Straight upstairs; turn to your right, first door on the left." As the men started forward, banging the mahogany banisters with the corners of the trunk at every step, Mrs. Brewster-Smith stepped in, immaculate as to sheer collar and cuffs, crisp and tailored as to suit, waved and netted as to hair, and chilled steel and diamond point as to will-power. "Oh, Genevieve, I didn't see you there! I didn't know why they stood there waiting so long. I know the house so well I knew of course which room you'll have for guests. Dear old house! It will be like returning to my childhood to live here again!" She cocked an ear toward the upper regions and frowned, but went on smoothly. "Such happy girlhood hours as I have passed here! After all there is nothing like the home feeling, is there, for us women at any rate! We're the natural conservatives, who cling to the simple, elemental satisfactions, and there's a heart-hunger that can only be satisfied by a home and a man's protection! I thought George's description too beautiful ... in his article you know... of the ideal home with the women of the family safe within its walls, protected from the savagery of the economic struggle which only men in their strength can bear without being crushed." She turned quickly and terribly to the expressmen coming down the stairs and said in so fierce a voice that they shrank back visibly, "There's another trunk to take up to the room next to that. And if you let it down with the bang you did this one, you'll get something that will surprise you! Do you hear me!" They shrank out, cowed and tiptoeing. Mrs. Brewster-Smith turned back to her young cousin-by-marriage and murmured, "That was such a true and deep saying of George's... wherever does such a young man get his wisdom!... that women are not fitted by nature to cope with hostile forces!" Cousin Emelene approached from behind the statue of Genevieve, still frozen in place with an expression of stupefaction on her white face. The older woman put her arms around the bride's neck and gave her an affectionate hug. "Oh, dearest Jinny, doesn't it seem like a dream that we're all going to be together, all we women, in a real home, with a real man at the head of it to direct us and give us of his strength! It does seem just like that beautiful old-fashioned home that George drew such an exquisite picture of, in his article, where the home was the center of the world to the women in it. It will be to me, I assure you, dear. I feel as though I had come to a haven, and as though I never would want to leave it!" The expressmen were carrying up another trunk now, and so conscious of the glittering eyes of mastery upon them that they carried it as though it were the Ark of the Covenant and they its chosen priests. Mrs. Brewster-Smith followed them with a firm tread, throwing over her shoulder to the stone Genevieve below, "Oh, my dear, little Eleanor and her nurse will be in soon. Frieda was taking Eleanor for her usual afternoon walk. Will you just send them upstairs when they come! I suppose Frieda will have the room in the third story, that extra room that was finished off when Uncle Henry lived here. Emelene, you'd better come right up, too, if you expect to get unpacked before dinner." She disappeared, and Emelene fluttered up after her, drawn along by suction, apparently, like a sheet of paper in the wake of a train. The expressmen came downstairs, still treading softly, and went out. Genevieve was alone again in her front hall. To her came tiptoeing Marie, with wide eyes of query and alarm. And from Marie's questioning face, Genevieve fled away like one fleeing from the plague. "Don't ask me, Marie! Don't speak to me. Don't you dare ask me what... or I'll..." She was at the front door as she spoke, poised for flight like a terrified doe. "I must see Mr. Remington! I don't know what to tell you, Marie, till I have seen Mr. Remington! I must see my husband! I don't know what to say, I don't know what to think, until I have seen my husband." Calling this eminently wifely sentiment over her shoulder she ran down the front walk, hatless, wrapless, just as she was in her pretty flowered and looped-up bride's house dress. She couldn't have run faster if the house had been on fire. The clicking of her high heels on the concrete sidewalk was a rattling tattoo so eloquent of disorganized panic that more than one head was thrust from a neighboring window to investigate, and more than one head was pulled back, nodding to the well-worn and charitable hypothesis, "Their first quarrel." The hypothesis would instantly have been withdrawn if any one had continued looking after the fleeing bride long enough to see her, regardless of passers-by, fling herself wildly into her husband's arms as he descended from the trolley-car at the corner. Betty Sheridan was sitting in the drawing-room of her parents' house, rather moodily reading a book on the Balance of Trade. She had an unconfessed weakness of mind on the subject of tariffs and international trade. Although when in college she had written a paper on it which had been read aloud in the Economics Seminar and favorably commented upon, she knew, in her heart of hearts, that she understood less than nothing about the underlying principles of the subject. This nettled her and gave her occasional nightmare moments of doubt as to the real fitness of women for public affairs. She read feverishly all she could find on the subject, ending by addling her brains to the point of frenzy. She was almost in that condition now although she did not look it in the least as, dressed for dinner in the evening gown which replaced the stark linens and tailored seams of her office-costume, she bent her shining head and earnest face over the pages of the book. Penfield Evans took a long look at her, as one looks at a rose-bush in bloom, before he spoke through the open door and broke the spell. "Oh, Betty," he called in a low tone, beckoning her with a gesture redolent of mystery. Betty laid down her book and stared. "What you want?" she challenged him, reverting to the phrase she had used when they were children together. "Come on out here a minute!" he said, jerking his head over his shoulder. "I want to show you something." "Oh, I can't fuss around with you," said Betty, turning to her book again. "I've got Roberts' Balance of Trade out of the library and I must finish it by tomorrow." She began to read again. The young man stood silent for a moment. "Great Scott!" he was saying to himself with a sinking heart. "So that's what they pick up for light reading, when they're waiting for dinner!" He had a particularly gone feeling because, although he had made several successful political speeches on international trade and foreign tariffs, he was intelligent enough to know in his heart of hearts that he had no real understanding of the principles involved. He had come, indeed, to doubt if any one had! Now, as he watched the pretty sleek head bent over the book he had supposed of course was a novel, he felt a qualm of real apprehension. Maybe there was something in what that guy said, the one who wrote a book to prove (bringing Queen Elizabeth and Catherine the Great as examples) that the real genius of women is for political life. Maybe they have a special gift for it! Maybe, a generation or so from now, it'll be the men who are disfranchised for incompetence.... He put away as fantastic such horrifying ideas, and with a quick action of his resolute will applied himself to the present situation. "Oh Betty, you don't know what you're missing! It's a sight you'll never forget as long as you live... oh, come on! Be a sport. Take a chance!" Betty was still suspicious of frivolity, but she rose, looked at her wrist-watch and guessed she'd have a few minutes before dinner, to fool away in light-minded society. "There's nothing light-minded about this!" Penny assured her gravely, leading her swiftly down the street, around the corner, up another street and finally, motioning her to silence, up on the well-clipped lawn of a handsome, dignified residence, set around with old trees. "Look!" he whispered in her ear, dramatically pointing in through the lighted window. "Look! What do you see?" Betty looked, and looked again and turned on him petulantly: "What foolishness are you up to now, Penfield Evans!" she whispered energetically. "Why under the sun did you drag me out to see Emelene and Alys Brewster-Smith dining with the Remingtons? Isn't it just the combination of reactionary old fogies you might expect to get together... though I didn't know Alys ever took her little girl out to dinner-parties, and Emelene must be perfectly crazy over that cat to take her here. Cats make George's flesh creep. Don't you remember, at the Sunday School Bazaar." He cut her short with a gesture of command, and applying his lips to her ear so that he would not be heard inside the house, he said, "You think all you see is Emelene and Alys taking dinner en famille with the Remingtons. Eyes that see not! What you are gazing upon is a reconstruction of the blessed family life that existed in the good old days, before the industrial period and the abominable practice of economic independence for women began! You are seeing Woman in her proper place, the Home,... if not her own Home, somebody's Home, anybody's Home... the Home of the man nearest to her, who owes her protection because she can't vote. You are gazing upon..." His rounded periods were silenced by a tight clutch on his wrist. "Penfield Evans. Don't you dare exaggerate to me! Have they come there to stay! To take him at his word!" He nodded solemnly. "Their trunks are upstairs in the only two spare-rooms in the house, and Frieda is installed in the only extra room in the attic. Marie gave notice that she was going to quit, just before dinner. George has been telephoning to my Aunt Harriet to see if she knows of another maid...." "Whatever... whatever could have made them think of such a thing!" gasped Betty, almost beyond words. "I did!" said Penfield Evans, tapping himself on the chest. "It was my giant intelligence that propelled them here." He was conscious of a lacy rush upon him, and of a couple of soft arms which gave him an impassioned embrace none the less vigorous because the arms were more used to tennis-racquets and canoe-paddles than impassioned embraces. Then he was thrust back... and there was Betty, collapsed against a lilac bush, shaking and convulsed, one hand pressed hard on her mouth to keep back the shrieks of merriment which continually escaped in suppressed squeals, the other hand outstretched to ward him off.... "No, don't you touch me, I didn't mean a thing by it! I just couldn't help it! It's too, too rich! Oh Penny, you duck! Oh, I shall die! I shall die! I never saw anything so funny in my life! Oh, Penny, take me away or I shall perish here and now!" On the whole, in spite of the repulsing hand, he took it that he had advanced his cause. He broke into a laugh, more light-hearted than he had uttered for a long time. They stood for a moment more in the soft darkness, gazing in with rapt eyes at the family scene. Then they reeled away up the street, gasping and choking with mirth, festooning themselves about trees for support when their legs gave way under them. "Did you see George's face when Emelene let the cat eat out of her plate!" cried Betty. "And did you see Genevieve's when Mrs. Brewster-Smith had the dessert set down in front of her to serve!" "How about little Eleanor upsetting the glass of milk on George's trousers!" "Oh poor old George! Did you ever see such gloom!" Thus bubbling, they came again to Betty's home with the door still open from which she had lately emerged. There Betty fell suddenly silent, all the laughter gone from her face. The man peered in the dusk, apprehensive. What had gone wrong, now, after all? "Do you know, Penny, we're pigs!" she said suddenly, with energy. "We're hateful, abominable pigs!" He glared at her and clutched his hair. "Didn't you see Emelene Brand's face? I can't get it out of my mind! It makes me sick, it was so happy and peaceful and befooled! Poor old dear! She believes all that! And she's the only one who does! And its beastly in us to make a joke of it! She has wanted a home all her life, and she'd have made a lovely one, too, for children! And she's been kept from it by all this fool's talk about womanliness." "Help! What under the sun are you..." began Penfield. "Why, look here, she's not and never was, the kind any man wants to marry. She wouldn't have liked a real husband, either... poor, dear, thin-blooded old child! But she wanted a home just the same. Everybody does! And if she had been taught how to earn a decent living, if she hadn't been fooled out of her five senses by that idiotic cant about a man's doing everything for you, or else going without... why she'd be working now, a happy, useful woman, bringing up two or three adopted children in a decent home she'd made for them with her own efforts... instead of making her loving heart ridiculous over a cat...." She dashed her hand over her eyes angrily, and stood silent for a moment, trying to control her quivering chin before she went into the house. The young man touched her shoulder with reverent fingers. "Betty," he said in a rather unsteady voice, "its true, all that bally-rot about women being better than men. You are!" With which very modern compliment, he turned and left her. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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