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Sturdy Oak, The

<h2> CHAPTER VIII. BY MARY HEATON VORSE </h2> The high moods of night do not always survive the clear, cold light of day. Indeed it requires the contribution of both man and wife to keep a high mood in married life. Genevieve had gone in to make her profession of faith to her husband in a mood which touched the high altitudes. She had gone without any conscious expectation of anything from him in the way of response. She had vaguely but confidingly expected him to live up to the moment. She had expected something beautiful, a lovely flower of the spirit—comprehension, generosity. Living up to the demand of the moment was George's forte. Indeed, there were those among his friends who felt that there were moments when George lived up to things too brightly and too beautifully. His Uncle Jaffry, for instance, had his openly skeptical moments. But George even lived up to his uncle's skepticism. He accepted his remarks with charming good humor. It was his pride that he could laugh at himself. At the moment of Genevieve's touching speech he lived up to exactly nothing. He didn't even smile. He only stared at her—a stare which said: "Now what the devil do you mean by that?" Genevieve had a flicker of bitter humor when she compared her moment of sentiment to a toy balloon pulled down from the blue by an unsympathetic hand. The next morning, while George was still shaving, the telephone rang. It was Betty. "Can you have lunch with me at Thorne's, where we can talk?" she asked Genevieve. "And give me a little time tomorrow afternoon?" "Why," Genevi�ve responded, "I thought you were a working girl." There was a perceptible pause before Betty replied. "Hasn't George told you?" "Told what?" Genevieve inquired. "George hasn't told me anything." "I've left the office." "Left! For heaven's sake, why?" Betty's mind worked swiftly. "Better treat it as a joke," was her decision. There was no pause before she answered. "Oh, trouble with the boss." "You'll get over it. You're always having trouble with Penny. "Oh," said Betty, "it's not with Penny this time." "Not with George?" "Yes, with George," Betty answered. "Did you think one couldn't quarrel with the noblest of his sex? Well, one can." "Oh, Betty, I'm sorry." Genevieve's tone was slightly reproachful. "Well, I'm not," said Betty. "I like my present job better. It was a good thing he fired me." "Fired you! George fired you?" "Sure thing," responded Betty blithely. "I can't stand here talking all day. What I want to know is, can I see you at lunch?" "Yes—why, yes, of course," said Genevieve, dazedly. Then she hung up the receiver and stared into space. George, beautifully dressed, tall and handsome, now emerged from his room. For once his adoring wife failed to notice that in appearance he rivaled the sun god. She had one thing she wanted to know, and she wanted to know it badly. It was, "Why did you fire Betty Sheridan?" She asked this in the insulting "point of the bayonet" tone which angry equals use to one another the world over. Either question or tone would have been enough to have put George's already sensitive nerves on edge. Both together were unbearable. It was, when you came down to it, the most awkward question in the world. Why, indeed, had he fired Betty Sheridan? He hadn't really given himself an account of the inward reasons yet. The episode had been too disturbing; and it was George's characteristic to put off looking on unpleasant facts as long as possible. Had he been really hard up, which he never had been, he would undoubtedly have put away, unopened, the bills he couldn't pay. Life was already presenting him with the bill of yesterday's ill humor, and he was not yet ready to add up the amount. He hid himself now behind the austerity of the offended husband. "My dear," he inquired in his turn, "don't you think that you had best leave the details of my office to me?" He knew how lame this was, and how inadequate, before Genevieve replied. "Betty Sheridan is not a detail of your office. She's one of my best friends, and I want to know why you fired her. I dare say she was exasperating; but I can't see any reason why you should have done it. You should have let her leave." It was Betty, with that lamentable lack of delicacy which George had pointed out to her, who had not been ready to leave. "You will have to let me be the judge of what I should or should not have done," said George. This piece of advice Genevieve ignored. "Why did you send her away?" she demanded. "I sent her away, if you want to know, for her insolence and her damned bad taste. If you think—working in my office as she was—it's decent or proper on her part to be active in a campaign that is against me——" "You mean because she's a suffragist? You sent her away for that! Why, really, that's tyranny! It's like my sending away some one working for me for her beliefs——" They stood staring at each other, not questioningly as they had yesterday, but as enemies,—the greater enemies that they so loved each other. Because of that each word of unkindness was a doubled-edged sword. They quarreled. It was the first time that they had seen each other without illusion. They had been to each other the ideal, the lover, husband, wife. Now, in the dismay of his amazement in finding himself quarreling with the perfect wife, a vagrant memory came to George that he had heard that Genevieve had a hot temper. She certainly had. He didn't notice how handsome she looked kindled with anger. He only knew that the rose garden in which they lived was being destroyed by their angry hands; that the very foundation of the life they had been leading was being undermined. The time of mirage and glamour was over. He had ceased being a hero and an ideal, and why? Because, forgetting his past life, his record, his achievement, Genevieve obstinately insisted on identifying him with one single mistake. He was willing to concede it was a mistake. She had not only identified him with it, but she had called him a number of wounding things. "Tyrant" was the least of them, and, worse than that, she had, in a very fury of temper, told him that he "needn't take that pompous"—yes, "pompous" had been her unpleasant word—"tone" with her, when he had inquired, more in sorrow than in anger, if this were really his Genevieve speaking. There was a pause in their hostilities. They looked at each other aghast. Aghast, they had perceived the same awful truth. Each saw that love [Illustration: "You mean because she's a suffragist? You sent her away for that? Why, really, that's tyranny!"] in the other's heart was dead, and that things never could be the same again. So they stood looking down this dark gulf, and the light of anger died. In a toneless voice: "We mustn't let Cousin Emelene and Alys hear us quarreling," said George. And Genevieve answered, "They've gone down to breakfast." The two ladies were seated at table. "We heard you two love birds cooing and billing, and thought we might as well begin," said Alys Brewster-Smith. "Regularity is of the highest importance in bringing up a child." Cousin Emelene was reading the Sentinel. George's quick eye glanced at the headlines: Candidate Remington Heckled by Suffragists. Ask Him Leading Questions. "Why, dear me," she remarked, her kind eyes on George, "it's perfectly awful, isn't it, that they break the laws that way just for a little more money. But I don't see why they want to annoy dear George. They ought to be glad they are going to get a district attorney who'll put all those things straight. I think it's very silly of them to ask him, don't you, Genevieve?" "Let me see," said Genevieve, taking the paper. "All he's got to do, anyway, is to answer," pursued Cousin Emelene. "Yes, that's all," replied Genevieve, her melancholy gaze on George. Yesterday she would have had Emelene's childlike faith. But this stranger, who, for a trivial and tyrannical reason, had sent away Betty—how would he act? "They showed these right opposite your windows?" she questioned. "Yes," he returned. "Our friend Mrs. Herrington did it herself. It was the first course of our dinner. If you think that's good taste—" "I would expect it of her," said Alys Brewster-Smith. "But it makes it so easy for George," Emelene repeated. "They'll know now what sort of a man he is. Little children at work, just to make a little more money—it's awful!" "Talking about money, George," said Alys, "have you seen to my houses yet?" "Not yet," replied the harassed George. "You'll have to excuse my going into the reasons now. I'm late as it is." His voice had not the calm he would have wished for. As he took his departure, he heard Alys saying, "If you'll let me, my dear, I'd adore helping you about the housekeeping. I don't want to stay here and be a burden. If you'll just turn it over to me, I could cut your housekeeping expenses in half." "Damn the women," was the unchivalrous thought that rose to George's lips. One would have supposed that trouble had followed closely enough on George Remington's trail, but now he found it awaiting him in his office. Usually, Penny was the late one. It was this light-hearted young man's custom to blow in with so engaging an expression and so cheerful a manner that any comment on his unpunctuality was impossible. Today, instead of a gay-hearted young man, he looked more like a sentencing judge. What he wanted to know was, "What have you done to Betty Sheridan? Do you mean to say that you had the nerve to send her away, send her out of my office without consulting me—and for a reason like that? How did you think I was going to feel about it?" "I didn't think about you," said George. "You bet you didn't. You thought about number one and your precious vanity. Why, if one were to separate you from your vanity, one couldn't see you when you were going down the street. Go on, make a frock coat gesture! Play the brilliant but outraged young district attorney. Do you know what it was to do a thing of that kind—to fire a girl because she didn't agree with you?" "It wasn't because she didn't agree with me," George interrupted, with heat. "It was the act of a cad," Penny finished. "Look here, young man, I'm going to tell you a few plain truths about yourself. You're not the sort of person that you think you are. You've deceived yourself the way other people are deceived about you—by your exterior. But inside of that good-looking carcass of yours there's a brain composed of cheese. You weren't only a cad to do it—you were a fool!" "You can't use that tone to me!" cried George. "Oh, can't I just? By Jove, it's things like that that make one wake up. Now I know why women have a passion for suffrage. I never knew before," Penny went on, with more passion than logic. "You had a nerve to make that statement of yours. You're a fine example of chivalry. You let loose a few things when you wrote that fool statement, but you did a worse trick when you fired Betty Sheridan. God, you're a pinhead—from the point of view of mere tactics. Sometimes I wonder whether you've any brain." George had turned white with anger. "That'll just about do," he remarked. "Oh, no, it won't," said Penny. "It won't do at all. I'm not going to remain in a firm where things like this can happen. I wouldn't risk my reputation and my future. You're going to do the decent thing. You're going to Betty Sheridan and tell her what you think of yourself. She won't come back, I suppose, but you might ask her to do that, too. And now I'm going out, to give you time to think this over. And tonight you can tell me what you've decided. And then I'll tell you whether I'm going to dissolve our partnership. Your temper's too bad to decide now. Maybe when you've done that she won't treat me like an unsavory stranger." He left, and George sat down to gloomy reflection. To do him justice, the idea of apologizing to Betty had already occurred to him. If he put off the day of reckoning, when the time came he would pay handsomely. He realized that there was no use in wasting energy and being angry with Penny. He looked over the happenings of the last few hours and the part he had played in them, and what he saw failed to please him. He saw himself being advised by Doolittle to concentrate on the Erie Oval. He heard him urging him not to be what Doolittle called unneighborly. The confiding words of Cousin Emelene rang in his ears. He saw himself, in a fit of ill-temper, discharging Betty. He saw Genevieve, lovely and scornful, urging him to be less pompous. All this, he had to admit, he had brought on himself. Why should he have been so angry at these questions? Again Emelene's remark echoed in his ear. He had only to answer them—and he was going to concentrate on the Erie Oval! There came a knock on the door, and a breezy young woman demanded, "D'you want a stenographer?" George wanted a stenographer, and wanted one badly. He put from him the whole vexed question in the press of work, and by lunch time he made up his mind to have it out with Betty. There was no use putting it off, and he knew that he could have no peace with himself until he did. He felt very tired—as though he had been doing actual physical work. He thought of yesterday as a land of lost content. But he couldn't find Betty. He bent his steps toward home, and as he did so affection for Genevieve flooded his heart. He so wanted yesterday back—things as they had been. He so wanted her love and her admiration. He wanted to put his tired head on her shoulder. He couldn't bear, not for another moment, to be at odds with her. He wondered what she had been doing, and how she had spent the morning. He imagined her crying her heart out. He leaped up the steps and ran up to his room. In it was Alys Brewster-Smith. She started slightly. "I was just looking for some cold cream," she explained. "Where's Genevieve?" George asked. "Oh, she's out," Alys replied casually. "She left a note for you." The note was a polite and noncommittal line informing George that Genevieve would not be back for lunch. He felt as though a lump of ice replaced his heart. His disappointment was the desperate disappointment of a small boy. He went back to the gloomy office and worked through the interminable day. Late in the afternoon Mr. Doolittle lounged heavily in. "Have some gum, George?" he inquired, inserting a large piece in his own mouth. He chewed rhythmically for a space. George waited. He knew that chewing gum was not the ultimate object of Mr. Doolittle's visit. "Don't women beat the Dutch?" he inquired at last. "Yes sir, mister; they do!" "What's up now?" George inquired. "The suffragists again?" "Nope; not on the face of it they ain't. It's the Woman's Forum that's doin' this. They've got a sweet little idea. 'Seein' Whitewater Sweat' they call it. "They're goin' around in bunches of twos, or mebbe blocks o' five, seein' all the sights; an' you know women ain't reasonable, an' you can't reason with them. They're goin' to find a pile o' things they won't like in this little burg o' ours, all right, all right. An' they'll want to have things changed right off. I want to see things changed m'self. I'd like to, but them things take time, an' that's what women won't understand. "Jimminee, I've heard of towns all messed up and candidates ruined just because the women got wrought up over tenement-house an' fire laws an' truck like that. Yes sir, they're out seein' Whitewater this minut, or will be if you can't divert their minds. Call 'em off, George, if you can. Get 'em fussy about sumpen else." "Why, what have I to do with it?" George inquired. "Well, I didn't know but what you might have sumpen," said Mr. Doolittle mildly. "It's that young lady that works here, Miss Sheridan, an' your wife what's organizin' it. Planning it all out to Thorne's at lunch they was, an' Heally was sittin' at the next table and beats it to me. You can see for yerself what a hell of a mess they'll make!" <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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