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Sturdy Oak, The

<h2> CHAPTER V. BY KATHLEEN NORRIS </h2> Her first evening with her augmented family Genevieve Remington never forgot. It is not at all likely that George ever forgot it, either; but to George it was only one in the series of disturbing events that followed his unqualified repudiation of the suffrage cause. To Genevieve's tender heart it meant the wreckage, not the preservation of the home; that lovely home to whose occupancy she had so hopefully looked. She was too young a wife to recognize in herself the evanescent emotions of the bride. The blight had fallen upon her for all time. What had been fire was ashes; it was all over. The roseate dream had been followed by a cruel, and a lasting, awakening. Some day Genevieve would laugh at the memory of this tragic evening, as she laughed at George's stern ultimatums, and at Junior's decision to be an engineer, and at Jinny's tiny cut thumb. But she had no sense of humor now. As she ran to the corner, and poured the whole distressful story into her husband's ears, she felt the walls of her castle in Spain crashing about her ears. George, of course, was wonderful; he had been that all his life. He only smiled, at first, at her news. "You poor little sweetheart!" he said to his wife, as she clung to his arm, and they entered the house together. "It's a shame to distress you so, just as we are getting settled, and Marie and Lottie are working in! But it's too absurd, and to have you worry your little head is ridiculous, of course! Let them stay here to dinner, and then I'll just quietly take it for granted that they are going home—" "But—but their trunks are here, dearest!" Husband and wife were in their own room now, and Genevieve was rapidly recovering her calm. George turned from his mirror to frown at her in surprise. "Their trunks! They didn't lose any time, did they? But do you mean to say there was no telephoning—no notice at all?" "They may have telephoned, George, love. But I was over at Grace Hatfield's for a while, and I got back just before they came in!" George went on with his dressing, a thoughtful expression on his face. Genevieve thought he looked stunning in the loose Oriental robe he wore while he shaved. "Well, whatever they think, we can't have this, you know," he said presently. "I'll have to be quite frank with Alys,—of course Emelene has no sense!" "Yes, be quite frank!" Genevieve urged eagerly. "Tell them that of course you were only speaking figuratively. Nobody ever means that a woman really can't get along without a man's protection, because look at the women who do—" She stopped, a little troubled by the expression on his face. "I said what I truly believe, dear," he said kindly. "You know that!" Genevieve was silent. Her heart beat furiously, and she felt that she was going to cry. He was angry with her—he was angry with her! Oh, what had she said, what had she said! "But for all that," George continued, after a moment, "nobody but two women could have put such an idiotic construction upon my words. I am certainly going to make that point with Alys. A sex that can jump headlong to such a perfectly untenable conclusion is very far from ready to assume the responsibilities of citizenship—" "George, dearest!" faltered Genevieve. She did not want to make him cross again, but she could not in all loyalty leave him under this misunderstanding, to approach the always articulate Alys. "George, it was Penny, I'm sure!" she said. "From what they said,—they talked all the time!—I think Penny went to see them, and sort of—sort of—suggested this! I'm so sorry, George—" George was sulphurously silent. "And Penny will make the most of it, you know!" Genevieve went on quickly and nervously. "If you should send them back, tonight, I know he'd tell Betty! And Betty says she is coming to see you because she has been asked to read an answer to your paper, at the Club, and she might—she has such a queer sense of humor—" Silence. Genevieve wished that she was dead, and that every one was dead. "I don't want to criticize you, dear," George said presently, in his kindest tone. "But the time to act, of course, was when they first arrived. I can't do anything now. We'll just have to face it through, for a few days." It was not much of a cloud, but it was their first. Genevieve went downstairs with tears in her eyes. She had wanted their home to be so cozy, so dainty, so intimate! And now to have two grown women and a child thrust into her Paradise! Marie was sulky, rattling the silver-drawer viciously while her mistress talked to her, and Lottie had an ugly smile as she submitted respectfully that there wasn't enough asparagus. Then George's remoteness was terrifying. He carved with appalling courtesy. "Is there another chicken, Genevieve?" he asked, as if he had only an impersonal interest in her kitchen. No, there was only the one. And plenty, too, said the guests pleasantly. Genevieve hoped there were eggs and bacon for Marie and Lottie and Frieda. "I'm going to ask you for just a mouthful more, it tastes so delicious and homy!" said Alys. "And then I want to talk a little business, George. It's about those houses of mine, out in Kentwood...." George looked at her blankly, over his drumstick. "Darling Tom left them," said Tom's widow, "and they really have rented well. They're right near the factory, you know. But now, just lately, some man from the agents has been writing and writing me; he says that one of them has been condemned, and that unless I do something or other they'll all be condemned. It's a horrid neighborhood, and I don't like the idea, anyway, of a woman poking about among drains and cellars. Yet, if I send the agent, he'll run me into fearful expense; they always do. So I'm going to take them out of his hands tomorrow, and turn it all over to you, and whatever you decide will be best!" "My dear girl, I'm the busiest man in the world!" George said. "Leave all that to Allen. He's the best agent in town!" "Oh, I took them away from Allen months ago, George. Sampson has them now." "Sampson? What the deuce did you change for? I don't know that Sampson is solvent. I certainly would go back to Allen—" "George, I can't!" The widow looked at her plate, swept him a coquettish glance, and dropped her eyes again. "Mr. Allen is a dear fellow," she elucidated, "but his wife is dreadful! There's nothing she won't suspect, and nothing she won't say!" "My dear cousin, this isn't a question of social values! It's business!" George said impatiently. "But I'll tell you what to do," he added, after scowling thought. "You put it in Miss Eliot's hands; she was with Allen for some years. Now she's gone in for herself, and she's doing well. We've given her several things—" "Take it out of a man's hands to put it into a woman's!" Alys exclaimed. And Emelene added softly: "What can a woman be thinking of, to go into a dreadful business like selling real estate and collecting rents!" "Of course, she was trained by men!" Genevieve threw in, a little anxiously. Alys was so tactless, when George was tired and hungry. She cast about desperately for some neutral topic, but before she could find one the widow spoke again. "I'll tell you what I'll do, George. I'll bring the books and papers to your office tomorrow morning, and then you can do whatever you think best! Just send me a check every month, and it will be all right!" "Just gather me up what's there, on the plate," Emelene said, with her nervous little laugh in the silence. "I declare I don't know when I've eaten such a dinner! But that reminds me that you could help me out wonderfully, too, Cousin George—I can't quite call you Mr. Remington!—with those wretched stocks of mine. I'm sure I don't know what they've been doing, but I know I get less money all the time! It's the New Haven, George, that P'pa left me two years ago. I can't understand anything about it, but yesterday I was talking to a young man who advised me to put all my money into some tonic stock. It's a tonic made just of plain earth—he says it makes everything grow. Doesn't it sound reasonable? But if I should lose all I have, I'm afraid I'd really wear my welcome out, Genevieve, dear. So perhaps you'll advise me?" "I'll do what I can!" George smiled, and Genevieve's heart rose. "But upon my word, what you both tell me isn't a strong argument for Betty's cause!" he added good-naturedly. "P'pa always said," Emelene quoted, "that if a woman looked about for a man to advise her, she'd find him! And as I sit here now, in this lovely home, I think—isn't it sweeter and wiser and better this way? For a while,—because I was a hot-headed, rebellious girl!—I couldn't see that he was right. I had had a disappointment, you know," she went on, her kind, mild eyes watering. Genevieve, who had been gazing in some astonishment at the once hot-headed, rebellious girl, sighed sympathetically. Every one knew about the Reverend Mr. Totter's death. "And after that I just wanted to be busy," continued Emelene. "I wanted to be a trained nurse, or a matron, or something! I look back at it now, and wonder what I was thinking about! And then dear Mama went, and I stepped into her place with P'pa. He wasn't exactly an invalid, but he did like to be fussed over, to have his meals cooked by my own hands, even if we were in a hotel. And whist—dear me, how I used to dread those three rubbers every evening! I was only a young woman then, and I suppose I was attractive to other men, but I never forgot Mr. Totter. And Cousin George," she turned to him submissively, "when you were talking about a woman's real sphere, I felt—well, almost guilty. Because only that one man ever asked me. Do you think, feeling as I did, that I should have deliberately made myself attractive to men?" George cleared his throat. "All women can't marry, I suppose. It's in England, I believe, that there are a million unmarried women. But you have made a contented and a womanly life for yourself, and, as a matter of fact, there always has been a man to stand between you and the struggle!" he said. "I know. First P'pa, and now you!" Emelene mused happily. "I wasn't thinking of myself. I was thinking that your father left you a comfortable income!" he said quickly. "And now you have asked me here; one of the dearest old places in town!" Emelene added innocently. Genevieve listened in a stupefaction. This was married life, then? Not since her childhood had Genevieve so longed to stamp, to scream, to protest, to tear this twisted scheme apart and start anew! She was not a crying woman, but she wanted to cry now. She was not—she told herself indignantly—quite a fool. But she felt that if George went on being martyred, and mechanically polite, and grim, she would go into hysterics. She had been married less than six weeks; that night she cried herself to sleep. Her guests were as agreeable as their natures permitted; but Genevieve was reduced, before the third day of their visit, to a condition of continual tears. This was her home, this was the place sacred to George and herself, and their love. Nobody in the world,—not his mother, not hers, had their mothers been living!—was welcome here. She had planned to be such a good wife to him, so thoughtful, so helpful, so brave when he must be away. But she could not rise to the height of sharing him with other women, and saying whatever she said to him in the hearing of witnesses. And then she dared not complain too openly! That was an additional hardship, for if George insulted his guests, then that horrid Penny— Genevieve had always liked Penny, and had danced and flirted with him aeons ago. She had actually told Betty that she hoped Betty would marry Penny. But now she felt that she loathed him. He was secretly laughing at George, at George who had dared to take a stand for old-fashioned virtue and the purity of the home! It was all so unexpected, so hard. Women everywhere were talking about George's article, and expected her to defend it! George, she could have defended. But how could she talk about a subject upon which she was not informed, in which, indeed, as she was rather fond of saying, she was absolutely uninterested? George was changed, too. Something was worrying him; and it was hard on the darling old boy to come home to Miss Emelene and the cat and Eleanor and Alys, every night! Emelene adored him, of course, and Alys was always interesting and vivacious, but—but it wasn't like coming home to his own little Genevieve! The bride wept in secret, and grew nervous and timid in manner. Mrs. Brewster-Smith, however, found this comprehensible enough, and one hot summer afternoon Genevieve went into George's office with her lovely head held high, her color quite gone, and her breath coming quickly with indignation. [Illustration: It was hard on the darling old boy to come home to Miss Emelene and the cat and Eleanor and Alys every night!] "George—I don't care what we do, or where we go! But I can't stand it! She said—she said—she told me—" Her husband was alone in his office, and Genevieve was now crying in his arms. He patted her shoulder tenderly. "I'm so worried all the time about dinners, and Lottie's going, and that child getting downstairs and letting in flies and licking the frosting off the maple cake," sobbed Genevieve, "that of course I show it! And if I have given up my gym work, it's just because I was so busy trying to get some one in Lottie's place! And now they say—they say—that they know what the matter is, and that I mustn't dance or play golf—the horrible, spying cats! I won't go back, George, I will not! I—" Again George was wonderful. He put his arm about her, and she sat down on the edge of his desk, and leaned against that dear protective shoulder and dried her eyes on one of his monogrammed handkerchiefs. He reminded her of a long-standing engagement for this evening with Betty and Penny, to go out to Sea Light and have dinner and a swim, and drive home in the moonlight. And when she was quiet again, he said tenderly: "You mustn't let the 'cats' worry you, Pussy. What they think isn't true, and I don't blame you for getting cross! But in one way, dear, aren't they right? Hasn't my little girl been riding and driving and dancing a little too hard? Is it the wisest thing, just now? You have been nervous lately, dear, and excitable. Mightn't there be a reason? Because I don't have to tell you, sweetheart, nothing would make me prouder, and Uncle Martin, of course, has made no secret of how he feels! You wouldn't be sorry, dear?" Genevieve had always loved children deeply. Long before this her happy dreams had peopled the old house in Sheridan Road with handsome, dark-eyed girls, and bright-eyed boys like their father. But, to her own intense astonishment, she found this speech from her husband distasteful. George would be "proud," and Uncle Martin pleased. But it suddenly occurred to Genevieve that neither George nor Uncle Martin would be tearful and nervous. Neither George nor Uncle Martin need eschew golf and riding and dancing. To be sick, when she had always been so well! To face death, for which she had always had so healthy a horror! Cousin Alex had died when her baby came, and Lois Farwell had never been well after the fourth Farwell baby made his appearance. Genevieve's tears died as if from flame. She gently put aside the sustaining arm, and went to the little mirror on the wall, to straighten her hat. She remembered buying this hat, a few weeks ago, in the ecstatic last days of the old life. "We needn't talk of that yet, George," she said quietly. She could see George's grieved look, in the mirror. There was a short silence in the office. Then Betty Sheridan, cool in pongee, came briskly in. "Hello, Jinny!" said she. "Had you forgotten our plan tonight? You're chaperoning me, I hope you realize! I'm rather difficile, too. Genevieve, Pudge is outside; he'll take you out and buy you something cold. I took him to lunch today. It was disgraceful! Except for a frightful-looking mess called German Pot Roast With Carrots and Noodles Sixty, he ate nothing but melon, lemon-meringue pie, and pineapple special. I was absolutely ashamed! George, I would have speech with you." "Private business, Betty?" he asked pleasantly. "My wife may not have the vote, but I trust her with all my affairs!" "Indeed, I'm not in the least interested!" Genevieve said saucily. She knew George was pleased with her as she went happily away. "It's just as well Jinny went," said Betty, when she and the district-attorney-elect were alone. "Because it's that old bore Colonel Jaynes! He's come again, and he says he will see you!" Deep red rose in George's handsome face. "He came here last week, and he came yesterday," Betty said, sitting down, "and really I think you should see him! You see, George, in that far-famed article of yours, you remarked that 'a veteran of the civil as well as the Spanish war' had told you that it was the restless outbreaking of a few northern women that helped to precipitate the national catastrophe, and he wants to know if you meant him!" "I named no names!" George said, with dignity, yet uneasily, too. "I know you didn't. But you see we haven't many veterans of both wars," Betty went on, pleasantly. "And of course old Mrs. Jaynes is a rabid suffragist, and she is simply hopping. He's a mild old man, you know, and evidently he wants to square things with 'Mother.' Now, George, who did you mean?" "A statement like that may be made in a general sense," George remarked, after scowling thought. "You might have made the statement on your own hook," Betty conceded, "but when you mention an anonymous Colonel, of course they all sit up! He says that he's going to get a signed statement from you that he never said that, and publish it!" "Ridiculous!" said George. "Then here are two letters," Betty pursued. "One is from the corresponding secretary of the Women's Non-partisan Pacific Coast Association. She says that they would be glad to hear from you regarding your statement that equal suffrage, in the western states, is an acknowledged failure." "She'll wait!" George predicted grimly. "Yes, I suppose so. But she's written to our Mrs. Herrington here, asking her to follow up the matter. George, dear," asked Betty maternally, "why did you do it? Why couldn't you let well enough alone!" "What's your other letter?" asked George. "It's just from Mr. Riker, of the Sentinel, George. He wants you to drop in. It seems that they want a correction on one of your statistics about the number of workingwomen in the United States who don't want the vote. He says it only wants a signed line from you that you were mistaken—" Refusing to see Colonel Jaynes, or to answer the Colonel's letter, George curtly telephoned the editor of the Sentinel, and walked home at four o'clock, his cheeks still burning, his mind in a whirl. Big issues should have been absorbing him: and his mind was pestered instead with these midges of the despised cause. Well, it was all in the day's work— And here was his sweet, devoted wife, fluttering across the hall, as cool as a rose, in her pink and white. And she had packed his things, in case they wanted to spend the night at Sea Light, and the "cats" had gone off for library books, and he must have some ginger-ale, before it was time to go for Betty and Penny. The day was perfection. The motor-car purred like a racing tiger under George's gloved hand. Betty and Penny were waiting, and the three young persons forgot all differences, and laughed and chatted in the old happy way, as they prepared for the start. But Betty was carrying a book: Catherine of Russia. "Do you know why suffragists should make an especial study of queens, George?" she asked, as she and Penny settled themselves on the back seat. "Well, I'll be interlocutor," George smiled, glancing up at the house, from which his wife might issue at any moment. "Why should suffragists read the lives of queens, Miss Bones?" "Because queens are absolutely the only women in all history who had equal rights!" Betty answered impassively. "Do you realize that? The only women whose moral and social and political instincts had full sway!" "And a sweet use they made of them, sometimes!" said George. "And who were the great rulers," pursued Betty. "Whose name in English history is like the names of Elizabeth and Victoria, or Matilda or Mary, for the matter of that? Who mended and conserved and built up what the kings tore down and wasted? Who made Russia an intellectual power—" Again Penny had an odd sense of fear. Were women perhaps superior to men, after all! "I don't think Catherine of Russia is a woman to whom a lady can point with pride," George said conclusively. Genevieve, who had appeared, shot Betty a triumphant glance as they started. Pudge waved to them from the candy store at the corner. "There's a new candy store every week!" said Penny, shuddering. "Heaven help that poor boy; it must be in the blood!" "Women must always have something sweet to nibble," George said, leaning back. "The United States took in two millions last year in gum alone!" "Men chew gum!" suggested Betty. "But come now, Betty, be fair!" George said. "Which sex eats more candy?" "Well, I suppose women do," she admitted. "You count the candy stores, down Main Street," George went on, "and ask yourself how it is that these people can pay rents and salaries just on candy,—nothing else. Did you ever think of that?" "Well, I could vote with a chocolate in my mouth!" Betty muttered mutinously, as the car turned into the afternoon peace of the main thoroughfare. "You count them on your side, Penny, and I will on mine!" Genevieve suggested. "All down the street." "Well, wait—we've passed two!" Penny said excitedly. "Go on; there's three. That grocery store with candy in the window!" "Groceries don't count!" objected Betty. "Oh, they do, too! And drug stores.... Every place that sells candy!" "Drug stores and groceries and fruit stores only count half a point," Betty stipulated. "Because they sell other things!" "That's fair enough," George conceded here, with a nod. Genevieve and Penny almost fell out of the car in their anxiety not to miss a point, and George quite deliberately lingered on the cross-streets, so that the damning total might be increased. Laughing and breathless, they came to the bridge that led from the town to the open fields, and took the count. "One hundred and two and a half!" shouted Penny and Genevi�ve triumphantly. George smiled over his wheel. "Oh, women, women!" he said. "One hundred and sixty-one!" said Betty. There was a shout of protest. "Oh, Betty Sheridan! You didn't! Why, we didn't miss one!" "I wasn't counting candy stores," smiled Betty. "Just to be different, I counted cigar stores and saloons. But it doesn't signify much either way, does it, George?" <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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