The Sturdy Oak Part 22

"That's where you are ignorant, my dear. If an investigation is made, especially if the women mix themselves up in it, then we shall have no choice but enforcement."

She had sunk down on her sofa, but now she sprang up. "And you don't mean to enforce the law in respect of women? Is that why you don't want the investigation?"

"Not at all. You are most unjust. You are most illogical, Genevieve. All I am asking is that the whole question should not be taken up at this moment--just before election."

"But this is the only moment when we can find out whether or not you are a candidate who will do what we want."

"_We_, Genevieve! Who do you mean by 'we'?"

She stared for a second at him, her eyes growing large and dark with astonishment.

"Oh, George," she gasped finally, "I think I meant women when I said 'we.' George, I'm afraid I'm a _suffragist_. And oh," she added, with a sort of wail, "I don't want to be, I don't want to be!"

"d.a.m.n Betty Sheridan," exclaimed George. "This is all her doing."

His wife shook her head. "No," she said, "it wasn't Betty who made me see."

"Who was it?"

"It was you, George."

"I don't understand you."

"You made me see why women want to vote for themselves. How can you represent me, when we disagree fundamentally?"

"How can we disagree fundamentally when we love each other?"

"You mean that because we love each other, I must think as you do?"

"What else could I mean, darling?"

"You might have meant that you would think as I do."

George glanced at her in deep offense.

"We have indeed drifted far apart," he said.

At this moment there was a knock at the door, and the news was conveyed to George that Mr. Evans was downstairs asking to see him.

"Oh dear," said Genevieve, "it seems as if we never could get a moment by ourselves nowadays. What does Penny want?"

"He wants to tell me whether he intends to dissolve partners.h.i.+p or not."

Any fear that his wife had disa.s.sociated herself from his interests should have been dispelled by the tone in which she exclaimed: "Dissolve partners.h.i.+p! Penny? Well, I never in my life! Where would Penny be without you, I should like to know! He must be crazy."

These words made George feel happier than anything that had happened to him throughout this day. His self-esteem began to revive.

"I think Penny has been a little hasty," he said, judicially but not unkindly. "He lost all self-control when he heard I had let Betty go."

"Isn't that like a man," said Genevieve, "to throw away his whole future just because he loses his temper?"

George did not directly answer this question, and his wife went on.

"However, it will be all right. He has seen Betty this afternoon, and she won't let him do anything foolish."

George glanced at her. "You mean that Betty will prevent his leaving the firm?"

"Of course she will."

George walked to the door.

"I seem to owe a good deal to my former stenographer," he said, "my wife, my partner; next, perhaps it will be my election."

CHAPTER X. BY ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD

Penny, pacing the drawing-room with pantheresque strides, came to a tense halt as Remington entered.

"Well?" he said, his eyes hard, his unwelcoming hands thrust deep into his pockets.

That identical "well" with its uptilt of question had been on George's tongue. It was a monosyllable that demanded an answer. Penny had got ahead of him, forced him, as it were, into the witness chair, and he resented it.

"Seems to me," he began hotly, "that you were the one who was going to make the statements--' whether or no,' I believe, we were to continue in partners.h.i.+p."

"Perhaps," retorted Penny, with the air of allowing no great importance to that angle of the argument, "but what I want to know is, _are_ you going to be a square man, and own up you were peeved into being a tyrant? And when you've done that, are you going to tell Betty, and apologize?"

George hesitated, trapped between his irritation and the still small voice.

"Look here," he said, with that amiable suavity that had won him many a concession, "you know well enough I don't want to hurt Betty's feelings.

If she feels that way about it, of course I'll apologize."

His partner looked at him in blank amazement.

"Gad!" he exclaimed as if examining a particularly fine specimen of some rare beetle, "what a bounder."

"Meaning me?" snapped George.

"Don't dare to quibble. Look me in the eye."

There was a third degree fatality about the usually debonair Penny that exacted obedience. George unwillingly looked him in the eye, and had a ghastly feeling of having his suddenly realized smallness X-rayed.

"You know d.a.m.ned well you acted like a cad," Penny continued, "and I want to know, for all our sakes, if you're man enough to own it?"

George's fundamental honesty mastered him. Anger died from his eyes. His clenched hands relaxed and began an unconscious and nervous exploration for a cigarette.

"Since you put it that way," he said, "and it happens that my conscience agrees with you--I'll go you. I _was_ a cad, and I'll tell Betty so.