The Sturdy Oak Part 10

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 a.s.sured 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 impa.s.sioned embrace none the less vigorous because the arms were more used to tennis-racquets and canoe-paddles than impa.s.sioned 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 gla.s.s 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 cras.h.i.+ng 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. n.o.body 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, "n.o.body but two women could have put such an idiotic construction upon my words. I am certainly going to make that point with Alys. A s.e.x that can jump headlong to such a perfectly untenable conclusion is very far from ready to a.s.sume the responsibilities of citizens.h.i.+p--"

"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.