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The Sturdy Oak

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"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.




CHAPTER V

BY KATHLEEN NORRIS


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.

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