A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Sturdy Oak

S >> Samuel Merwin >> The Sturdy Oak




"Want to make a quarter, Pudge? Take this letter, right now, to Mrs. George
Remington. Give it to her personally. It's the old Remington place, you
know."

He felt in his change pocket. It was empty. He hesitated, turned to Evans,
then, reconsidering, produced a dollar bill from another pocket and gave it
to the boy.

"Now run," he said.

The boy, speechless, turned and moved out of the office. His sister spoke
to him, but he did not turn his head. He rolled down the stairs to the
street, stood a moment in front of Humphrey's, drew a sudden breath that
was almost a gasp, waddled into the store, advanced directly on the
soda fountain, and with a blazing red face and angrily triumphant eyes
confronted Billy Simmons.

"I'll take a chocolate marshmallow nut sundae," he said. "And you needn't
be stingy with the marshmallow, either!"

* * * * *

At ten minutes past four, the anxious Antis in the Remington living-room
heard the candidate for district attorney running down the stairs, and even
Mrs. Brewster-Smith was hushed. The candidate stopped, however, on the
landing. They heard him lift the telephone receiver. He called a number.
Then-----

"_Sentinel_ office?... Mr. Ledbetter, please.... Hello, Ledbetter!
Remington speaking. I have that statement ready. Will you send a man
around?... Yes, right away. And I wish you'd put it on the wires. Display
it just as prominently as you can, won't you?... Thanks. That's fine!
Good-by."

He ran back upstairs.

But shortly he appeared, wearing the distrait, exalted expression of the
genius who has just passed through the creative act. He looked very tall
and strong as he stood before the mantel, receiving the congratulations of
Mrs. Brewster-Smith and the timid admiration of Cousin Emelene. His few
words were well chosen and were uttered with dignity.

"And now, dear Mr. Remington, I'm sure I don't need to ask you if you are
taking the right stand on suffrage." This from Mrs. Brewster-Smith.

The candidate smiled tolerantly.

"If unequivocal opposition is 'right'----"

"Oh, you dear man! I was sure we could count on you. Isn't it splendid,
Geneviève!"

The reporters came.

* * * * *

It was a busy evening for the young couple. There were relatives for
dinner. Other relatives and an old friend or two came later. Throughout,
George wore that quietly exalted expression, and carried himself with the
new dignity.

To the adoring Genevieve his chin had never appeared so long and strong,
his thought had never seemed so elevated, his quiet self-respect had never
been so commanding. He was no longer merely her George, he was now a public
figure. Soon he would be district attorney; then, very likely, Governor;
then--well, Senator; and finally--it was possible--some one had to
be--President of the United States. He had begun, this day, by making a
great decision, by stepping boldly out on principle, on moral principle,
and announcing himself a defender of the home, of the right.

At midnight, the last guest departed. George and Genevieve stepped out into
the summer moonlight and strolled arm in arm down the walk.

Waddling up the street appeared a very fat boy.

"Why, Pudge," cried Geneviève, "what on earth are you doing out at this
time of night!"

"I'm going home, I tell you!" muttered the boy, on the defensive. He
carried a large bag of what seemed to be chocolate creams, from which he
was eating.

As he passed, a twinge of memory disturbed him. He fumbled in his pockets.

"I was to give you this," he said then; and leaving a crumpled envelope
in Genevieve's hand, he walked on as rapidly as he could.

A few minutes later, standing under the light in the front hall, George
Remington read this penciled note:

"I stood ready to contribute more than I promised--any amount to put you
over. But if you give out a statement against suffrage you're a damn fool
and I withdraw every cent. A man with no more political sense and skill
than that isn't worth helping. You should have advised me.

"M. J."




CHAPTER II

BY HARRY LEON WILSON


It may have been surmised that our sterling young candidate for district
attorney had not yet become skilled in dalliance with the equivocal; that
he was no adept in ambiguity; that he would confront all issues with a
rugged valiance susceptible of no misconstruction; that, in short, George
Remington was no trimmer.

If he opposed an issue, one knew that he opposed it from the heart out. He
said so and he meant it. And, being opposed to the dreadful heresy of equal
suffrage, no reader of the Whitewater _Sentinel_ that morning could say,
as the shrewd so often say of our older statesmen, that George was
"side-stepping."

Not George's the mellow gift to say, in effect, that of course woman should
vote the instant she wishes to, though perhaps that day has not yet come.
Meantime the speaker boldly defies the world to show a man holding woman in
loftier regard than he does, or ready to accord her a higher value in
all true functions of the body politic. Equal suffrage, thank God, is
inevitable at some future time, but until that glorious day when we can be
assured that the sex has united in a demand for it, it were perhaps as
well not to cloud the issues of the campaign now opening; though let it be
understood, and he cannot put this too plainly, that he reveres the memory
of his gray-haired mother without whose tender ministrations and wise
guidance he could never have reached the height from which he now speaks.
And so let us pass on to the voting on these canal bonds, the true
inwardness of which, thanks to the venal activities of a corrupt
opposition, even an exclusively male constituency has thus far failed to
comprehend. And so forth.

Our hero, then, had yet to acquire this finesse. As we are now privileged
to observe him, he is as easy to understand as the multiplication table,
as little devious and, alas! as lacking in suavity. Yet, let us be fair to
George. Mere innocence of guile, of verbal trickery, had not alone sufficed
for his passionate bluntness in the present crisis. At a later stage in
his career as a husband he might have been equally blunt; yet never again,
perhaps, would he have been so emotional in his opposition to woman
polluting herself with the mire of politics.

Be it recalled that but five weeks had elapsed since George had solemnly
promised to cherish and protect the fairest of the non-voting sex--at least
in his State--and he was still taking his mission seriously. As he wrote
the words that were now electrifying, in a manner of speaking, the readers
of the _Sentinel_, and of neighboring journals with enough enterprise to
secure them, he had beheld his own Genevieve, fine, flawless, tenderly
nourished flower that she was, being dragged from her high place with the
most distressing results.

He saw her rushed from the sacred shelter of her home and made to attend
primaries; he saw her compelled to strive tearfully with problems that
revolted all her finer instincts; he saw her insulted at polling booths;
saw her voting in company with persons of both sexes whom one could never
know.

He saw her tainted, bruised, beaten down in the struggle, losing little by
little all sense of the holy values of Wife, Mother, Home. As he wrote he
heard her weakening cries for help as she perished, and more than once his
left arm instinctively curved to shield her.

Was it not for his wife, then; nay, for wifehood itself, that he wrote?
And so, was it quite fair for unmarried Penfield Evans, burning at his
breakfast table a cynical cigarette over the printed philippic, to murmur,
"Gee! old George _has_ spilled the beans!"

Simple words enough and not devoid of friendly concern. But should he not
have divined that George had been appalled to his extremities of speech
by the horrendous vision of his fair young bride being hurled into depths
where she would be obliged, if not to have opinions of her own, at least to
vote with the rabble as he might decide they ought to vote?

And should not other critics known to us have divined the racking anguish
under which George had labored? For one, should not Elizabeth Sheridan,
amateur spinster, have been all sympathy for one who was palpably more an
alarmed bridegroom than a mere candidate?

Should not her maiden heart have been touched by this plausible aspect of
George's dilemma, rather than her mere brain to have been steeled to a
humorous disparagement tinged with bitterness?

And yet, "What rot!" muttered Miss Sheridan,--"silly rot, bally rot, tommy
rot, and all the other kinds!"

Hereupon she creased a brow not meant for creases and defaced an admirable
nose with grievous wrinkles of disdain. "Sacred names of wife and mother!"
This seemed regrettably like swearing as she delivered it, though she
quoted verbatim. "Sacred names of petted imbeciles!" she amended.

Then, with berserker fury, crumpling her _Sentinel_ into a ball, she
venomously hurled it to the depths of a waste basket and religiously rubbed
the feel of it from her fingers. As she had not even glanced at the column
headed "Births, Deaths, Marriages," it will be seen that her agitation was
real. And surely a more discerning sympathy might have been looked for from
the seasoned Martin Jaffry. A bachelor full of years and therefore with
illusions not only unimpaired but ripened, who more quickly than he should
have divined that his nephew for the moment viewed all womankind as but one
multiplied Genevieve, upon whom it would be heinous to place the shackles
of suffrage?

Perhaps Uncle Martin did divine this. Perhaps he was a mere trimmer, a rank
side-stepper, steeped in deceit and ever ready to mouth the abominable
phrase "political expediency." It were rash to affirm this, for no analyst
has ever fathomed the heart of a man who has come to his late forties a
bachelor by choice. One may but guess from the ensuing meager data.

Uncle Martin at a certain corner of Maple Avenue that morning, fell in
with Penfield Evans, who, clad as the lilies of a florist's window, strode
buoyantly toward his office, the vision of his day's toil pinkly suffused
by an overlaying vision of a Betty or Sheridan character. Mr. Evans bubbled
his greeting. "Morning! Have you seen it? Oh, _say_, have you seen it?"

The immediate manner of Uncle Martin not less than his subdued garb of
gray, his dark gloves and his somber stick, intimated that he saw nothing
to bubble about.

"He has burned his bridges behind him." The speaker looked as grim as any
bachelor-by-choice ever may.

"Regular little fire-bug," blithely responded Mr. Evans, moderating his
stride to that of the other.

"Can't understand it," resumed the gloomy uncle. "I sent him word in time;
sent it from your office by messenger. It was plain enough. I told him no
money of mine would go into his campaign if he made a fool of himself--or
words to that effect."

"Phew! Cast you off, did he? Just like that?"

"Just like that! Went out of his way to overdo it, too. Needn't have come
out half so strong. No chance now to backwater--not a chance on earth
to explain what he really did mean--and make it something different."
"Quixotic! That's how it reads to me."

Uncle Martin here became oracular, his somber stick gesturing to point his
words.

"Trouble with poor George, he's been silly enough to blurt out the truth,
what every man of us thinks in his heart--"

"Eh?" said Mr. Evans quickly, as one who has been jolted.

"No more sense than to come right out and say what every one of us thinks
in his secret heart about women. I think it and you think it--"

"Oh, well, if you put it _that_ way," admitted young Mr. Evans gracefully.
"But of course--"

"Certainly, of _course!_ We all think it--sacred names of home and mother
and all the rest of it; but a man running for office these days is a chump
to say so, isn't he? Of course he is! What chance does it leave him? Answer
me that."

"Darned little, if you ask me," said Mr. Evans judicially. "Poor old
George!"

"Talks as if he were going to be married tomorrow instead of its having
come off five weeks ago," pursued Uncle Martin bitterly. Plainly there were
depths of understanding in the man, trimmer though he might be.

Mr. Evans made no reply. Irrationally he was considering the terms "five
weeks" and "married" in relation to a spinster who would have professed to
be indignant had she known it.

"Got to pull the poor devil out," said Uncle Martin, when in silence they
had traversed fifty feet more of the shaded side of Maple Avenue.

"How?" demanded the again practical Mr. Evans.

"Make him take it back; make him recant; swing him over the last week
before election. Make him eat his words with every sign of exquisite
relish. Simple enough!"

"How?" persisted Mr. Evans.

"Wiles, tricks, subterfuges, chicanery--understand what I mean?"

"Sure! I understand what you mean as well as you do, but--come down to
brass tacks."

"That's an entirely different matter," conceded Uncle Martin gruffly. "It
may take thought."

"Oh, is that all? Very well then; we'll think. I, myself, will think.
First, I'll have a talk with the sodden amorist. I'll grill him. I'll find
the weak spot in his armor. There must be something we can put over on
him."

"By fair means or foul," insisted Uncle Martin as they paused at the
parting of their ways. "Low-down, underhanded work--do you get what I
mean?"

"I do, I do!" declared young Mr. Evans and broke once more into the buoyant
stride of an earlier moment. This buoyance was interrupted but once, and
briefly, ere he gained the haven of his office.

As he stepped quite too buoyantly into Fountain Square, he was all but run
down by the new six-cylinder roadster of Mrs. Harvey Herrington, driven
by the enthusiastic owner. He regained the curb in time, with a ready and
heartfelt utterance nicely befitting the emergency.

The president of the Whitewater Women's Club, the Municipal League and the
Suffrage Society, brought her toy to a stop fifteen feet beyond her too
agile quarry, with a fine disregard for brakes and tire surfaces. She
beckoned eagerly to him she might have slain. She was a large woman with an
air of graceful but resolute authority; a woman good to look upon, attired
with all deference to the modes of the moment, and exhaling an agreeable
sense of good-will to all.

"Be careful always to look before you start across and you'll never have to
say such things," was her greeting to Mr. Evans, as he halted beside this
minor juggernaut.

"Sorry you heard it," lied the young man readily.

"Such a flexible little car--picks up before one realizes," conceded
Whitewater's acknowledged social dictator. "But what I wanted to say is
this: that poor daft partner of yours has mortally offended every woman in
town except three, with that silly screed of his. I've seen nearly all of
them that count this morning, or they've called me by telephone. Now,
why couldn't he have had the advice of some good, capable woman before
committing himself so rabidly?"

"Who were the three?" queried Mr. Evans.

"Oh, poor Genevieve, of course; she goes without saying. And
you'd guess the other two if you knew them better--his cousin, Alys
Brewster-Smith, and poor Genevieve's Cousin Emelene. They both have his
horrible school-boy composition committed to memory, I do believe.

"Cousin Emelene recited most of it to me with tears in her weak eyes, and
Alys tells me his noble words have made the world seem like a different
place to her. She said she had been coming to believe that chivalry of the
old true brand was dying out, but that dear Cousin George has renewed her
faith in it.

"Think of poor Genevieve when they both fall on his neck. They're going up
for that particular purpose this afternoon. The only two in town, mind you,
except poor Genevieve. Oh, it's too awfully bad, because aside from this
medieval view of his, George was probably as acceptable for this office as
any man could be."

The lady burdened the word "man" with a tiny but distinguishable emphasis.
Mr. Evans chose to ignore this.

"George's friends are going to take him in hand," said he. "Of course he
was foolish to come out the way he has, even if he did say only what every
man believes in his secret heart."

The president of the Whitewater Woman's Club fixed him with a glittering
and suddenly hostile eye.

"What! you too?" she flung at him. He caught himself. He essayed
explanations, modifications, a better lighting of the thing. But at the
expiration of his first blundering sentence Mrs. Herrington, with her
flexible little car, was narrowly missing an aged and careless pedestrian
fifty yards down the street.

* * * * *

"George come in yet?"

For the second time Mr. Evans was demanding this of Miss Elizabeth Sheridan
who had also ignored his preliminary "Good morning!"

Now for a moment more she typed viciously. One would have said that the
thriving legal business of Remington and Evans required the very swift
completion of the document upon which she wrought. And one would have been
grossly deceived. The sheet had been drawn into the machine at the
moment Mr. Evans' buoyant step had been heard in the outer hall, and upon
it was merely written a dozen times the bald assertion, "Now is the time
for all good men to come to the aid of the party."

Actually it was but the mechanical explosion of the performer's mood,
rather than the wording of a sentiment now or at any happier time
entertained by her.

At last she paused; she sullenly permitted herself to be interrupted. Her
hands still hovered above the already well-punished keys of the typewriter.
She glanced over a shoulder at Mr. Evans and allowed him to observe her
annoyance at the interruption.

"George has not come in yet," she said coldly. "I don't think he will ever
come in again. I don't see how he can have the face to. I shouldn't think
he could ever show himself on the street again after that--that--"

The young woman's emotion overcame her at this point. Again her relentless
fingers stung the blameless mechanism--"to come to the aid of the party.
Now is the time for all good--" She here controlled herself to further
speech. "And _you!_ Of course you applaud him for it. Oh, I knew you were
all alike!"

"Now look here, Betty, this thing has gone far enough----"

"Far enough, indeed!"

"But you won't give me a chance!"

Mr. Evans here bent above his employee in a threatening manner.

"You don't even ask what I think about it. You say I'm guilty and ought
to be shot without a trial--not even waiting till sunrise. If you had the
least bit of fairness in your heart you'd have asked me what I really
thought about this outbreak of George's, and I'd have told you in so many
words that I think he's made all kinds of a fool of himself."

"No! Do you really, Pen?"

Miss Sheridan had swiftly become human. She allowed her eyes to meet those
of Mr. Evans' with an easy gladness but little known to him of late. "Of
course I do, Betty. The idea of a candidate for office in this enlightened
age breaking loose in that manner! It's suicide. He could be arrested for
the attempt in this State. Is that strong enough for you? You surely know
how I feel now, don't you? Come on, Betty dear! Let's not spar in that
foolish way any longer. Remember all I said yesterday. It goes double
today--really, I see things more clearly."

Plainly Miss Sheridan was disarmed.

"And I thought you'd approve every word of his silly tirade," she murmured.
Mr. Evans, still above her, was perilously shaken by the softer note in
her voice, but he controlled himself in time and sat in one of the chairs
reserved for waiting clients. It was near Miss Sheridan, yet beyond
reaching distance. He felt that he must be cool in this moment of impending
triumph.

"Wasn't it the awfullest rot?" demanded the spinster, pounding out a row of
periods for emphasis.

"And he's got to be made to eat his words," said Mr. Evans, wisely taking
the same by-path away from the one subject in all the world that really
mattered.

"Who could make him?"

"I could, if I tried." It came in quiet, masterful tones that almost
convinced the speaker himself.

"Oh, Pen, if you could! Wouldn't that be a victory, though? If you only
could----"

"Well, if I only could--and if I do?" His intention was too pointed to be
ignored.

"Oh, _that_!" He winced at the belittling "that." "Of course I couldn't
promise--anyway I don't believe you could ever do it, so what's the use of
being silly?"

"But you will--will you promise, if I _do_ convert George? Answer the
question, please!" Mr. Evans glared as only actual district attorneys have
the right to.

"Oh, what nonsense--but, well, I'll promise--I'll promise to promise to
think very seriously about it indeed, if you bring George around."

"Betty!" It was the voice of an able pleader and he half arose from his
chair, his arms eloquent of purpose. "'Now is the time for all good men to
come to the aid of the party. Now is the time for'--" wrote Miss Sheridan
with dazzling fingers, and the pleader resumed his seat.

"How will you bring him 'round," she then demanded.

"Wiles, tricks, stratagems," replied the rising young diplomat moodily,
smarting under the moment's defeat.

"Serve him right for pulling all that old-fashioned nonsense," said Miss
Sheridan, and accorded her employer a glance in which admiration for his
prowess was not half concealed.

"The words of a fool wise in his own folly," went on the encouraged Mr.
Evans, and then, alas! a victim to the slight oratorical thrill these words
brought him,--"honestly uttering what every last man believes and feels
about woman in his heart and yet what no sane man running for office can
say in public--here, what's the matter?"

The latter clause had been evoked by the sight of a blazing Miss Sheridan,
who now stood over him with fists tightly clenched. "Oh, oh, oh!" This
was low, tense, thrilling. It expressed horror. "So that's what your
convictions amount to! Then you do applaud him, every word of him, and you
were deceiving me. Every man in his own heart, indeed. Thank heaven I found
you out in time!"

It may be said that Mr. Evans now cowered in his chair. The term is not too
violent. He ventured to lift a hand in weak protest.

"No, no, Betty, you are being unjust to me again. I meant that that was
what Martin Jaffry told me this morning. It isn't what I believe at all. I
tell you my own deepest sentiments are exactly what yours are in this great
cause which--which--"


Painfully he became aware of his own futility. Miss Sheridan had ceased to
blaze. Seated again before the typewriter she grinned at him with amused
incredulity.

"You nearly had me going, Pen."

Mr. Evans summoned the deeper resources of his manhood and achieved an
easier manner. He brazenly returned her grin. "I'll have you going again
before I'm through--remember that."

"By wiles, tricks and stratagems, I suppose."

"The same. By those I shall make poor George recant, and by those, assuming
you to be a woman with a fine sense of honor who will hold a promise
sacred, I shall have you going. And, mark my words, you'll be going good,
too!"

"Silly!"

She drew from the waste basket the maltreated _Sentinel_, unfurled it to
expose the offending matter, and smote the column with the backs of four
accusing fingers.

"There, my dear, is your answer. Now run along like a good boy."

"Silly!" said Mr. Evans, striving for a masterly finish to the unequal
combat. He arose, dissembling cheerful confidence, straightened the frame
of a steel-engraved Daniel Webster on the wall, and thrice paced the length
of the room, falsely appearing to be engaged in deep thought.

Miss Sheridan, apparently for mere exclamatory purposes, now reread the
fulmination of the absent partner. She scoffed, she sneered, flouted,
derided, and one understood that she was including both members of the
firm. Then her listener became aware that she had achieved coherence.

"Indeed, yes! Do you know what ought to happen to him? Every unprotected
female in this county ought to pack her trunk and trudge right up to the
Remington place and say, 'Here we are, noble man! We have read your burning
words in which you offer to protect us. Save us from the vote! Let your
home be our sanctuary. That's what you mean if you meant anything but
tommy-rot. Here and now we throw ourselves upon your boasted chivalry.
Where are our rooms, and what time is luncheon served.'"

"Here! Just say that again," called Mr. Evans from across the room. Miss
Sheridan obliged. She elaborated her theme. George should be taken at
his word by every weak flower of womanhood. If women were nothing but
ministering angels, it was "up to" George to give 'em a chance to minister.

So went Miss Sheridan's improvisation and Mr. Evans, suffering the throes
of a mighty inspiration, suddenly found it sweetest music.

When Miss Sheridan subsided, Mr. Evans appeared to have forgotten the cause
of their late encounter. Whistling cheerily he bustled into his own office,
mumbling of matters that had to be "gotten off." For some moments he busied
himself at his desk, then emerged to dictate three business letters to his
late antagonist.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.