Destiny, busybody that she is, has her thousand irons in her perpetual fires, turning, testing and wielding them.
While Miss Betty Sheridan, for another scornful time, was rereading the well-thumbed copy of theSentinel, her fine back arched like a prize cat's, George Remington in his small mahogany office adjoining, neck low and heels high, was codifying, over and over again, the small planks of his platform, stuffing the knot holes which afforded peeps to the opposite side of the issue with anti-putty, and planning a bombardment of his pattest phrases for the complete capitulation of his Uncle Jaffry.
While Genevieve Remington in her snug library, so eager in her wifeliness to clamber up to her husband's small planks, and if need be, spread her prettily flounced skirts over the rotting places, was memorizing, with more pride than understanding, extracts from the controversial article for quotation at the Woman's Club meeting, Mr. Penfield Evans, with a determination which considerably expanded his considerable chest measurement, ran two at a bound up the white stone steps of Mrs. Gallup's private boarding-house and pulled out the white china knob of a bell that gave no evidence of having sounded within, and left him uncertain to ring again.
A cast-iron deer, with lichen growing along its antlers, stood poised for instant flight in Mrs. Gallup's front yard.
While Mr. Evans waited he regarded its cast-iron flanks, but not seeingly. His rather the expression of one who stares into the future and smiles at what he sees.
Erie Street, shaded by a double row of showy chestnuts, lay in summer calm. A garden hose with a patent attachment spun spray over an adjoining lawn and sent up a greeny smell. Out from under the striped awning of Hassebrock's Ice Cream Parlor, cat-a-corner, Percival Pauncefort Sheridan, in rubber-heeled canvas shoes and white trousers, cuffed high, emerged and turned down Huron Street, making frequent forays into a bulging rear pocket.
Miss Lydia Chipley, vice-president of the Busy Bee Sewing and Civic Club, cool, starchy and unhatted, clicked past on slim, trim heels, all radiated by the reflection from a pink parasol, gay embroidery bag dangling.
"Hello, Lyd!"
"Hello, Pen!"
"What's your hurry?"
"It's my middle name."
"Why hurry, when the future is always waiting?"
"Why aren't you holding your partner's head since he committed political suicide in theSentinel?"
"I'd rather hold your head, Lyd, any day in the week."
"Gaul," said Miss Chipley, passing on, her sharply etched little face glowing in the pink reflection of the parasol, "is bounded on the north by Mrs. Gallup's boarding-house, and on the south by——"
"By the Frigid Zone!"
Then the door from behind swung open. Mr. Penfield Evans stepped into Mrs. Gallup's cool, exclusive parlor of better days, and delivering his card to a moist-fingered maid, sat himself among the shrouded furniture to await Mrs. Alys Brewster-Smith and Miss Emelene Brand.
Mrs. Gallup's boarding-house was finishing its noonday meal. Boiled odors lay upon a parlor that was otherwise redolent of the more opulent days of the Gallups. A not too ostentatious clatter of dishes came through the closed folding-doors.
Almost immediately Mrs. Alys Brewster-Smith, her favorite Concentrated Breath of the Lily always in advance, rustled into the darkened parlor, her stride hitting vigorously into her black taffeta skirts. Even as she shook hands with Mr. Evans, she jerked the window shade to its height, so that her smoothness and coloring shone out above her weeds.
In the shadow of her and at her life job of bringing up the rear, with a large Maltese cat padding beside her, entered Miss Brand on rubber heels. She was the color of long twilight.
Mr. Evans rose to his six-feet-in-his-stockings and extended them each a hand, Miss Emelene drawing the left.
Mrs. Smith threw up a dainty gesture, black lace ruffles falling back from arms all the whiter because of them.
"Well, Penny Evans!"
"None other, Mrs. Smith, than the villain himself."
"Be seated, Penfield."
"Thanks, Miss Emelene."
They drew up in a triangle beside the window overlooking the cast-iron deer. The cat sprang up, curling in the crotch of Miss Emelene's arm.
"Nice ittie kittie, say how-do to big Penny-field-Evans. Say how-do to big man. Say how-do, muvver's ittie kittie." Miss Emelene extended the somewhat reluctant Maltese paw, five hook-shaped claws slightly in evidence.
"Say how-do to Hanna, Penfield. Hanna, say how-do to big man." "How-do, Hanna," said Mr. Evans, reddening slightly beneath his tan. Then hitched his chair closer.
"To what," he began, flashing his white smile from one to the other of them, and with a strong veer to the facetious, "are we indebted for the honor of this visit? Are those the unspoken words, ladies?"
"Nothing wrong at home, Penfield? Nobody ailing or—"
"No, no, Miss Emelene, never better. As a matter of fact, it's a piece of political business that has prompted me to—"
At that Mrs. Smith jangled her bracelets, leaning forward on her knees.
"If it's got anything to do with your partner and my cousin George Remington having the courage to go in for the district attorneyship without the support of the vote-hunting, vote-eating women of this town, I'm here to tell you that I'm with him heart and soul. He can have my support and—"
"Mine too. And if I've got anything to say my two nephews will vote for him; and I think I have, with my two heirs."
"Ladies, it fills my heart with joy to—"
"Votes! Why what would the powder-puffing, short-skirted, bridge-playing women of this town do with the vote if they had it? Wear it around their necks on a gold chain?"
"Well spoken, Mrs. Smith, if—"
"I know the direction you lean, Penfield Evans, letting—"
"But, Miss Emelene, I—"
"Letting that shameless Betty Sheridan, a girl that had as sweet and womanly a mother as Whitewater ever boasted, lead you around by the nose on her suffrage string. A girl with her raising and both of her grandmothers women that lived and died genteel, to go traipsing around in her low heels in men's offices and addressing hoi polloi from soap boxes! Why, between her and that female chauffeur, Mrs. Herrington, another woman whose mother was of too fine feelings even to join the Delsarte class, the women of this town are being influenced to making disgraceful—dis—oh, what shall I say, Alys?"
Here Mrs. Smith broke in, thumping a soft fist into a soft palm.
"It's the most pernicious movement, Mr. Evans, that has ever got hold of this community and we need a man like my cousin George Remington to—"
"But, Mrs. Smith, that's just what I—"
"To stamp it out! Stamp it out! It's eating into the homes of Whitewater, trying to make breadwinners out of the creatures God intended for the bread-eaters—I mean bread-bakers."
"But, Mrs. Smith, I—"
"Woman's place has been the home since home was a cave, and it will be the home so long as women will remember that womanliness is their greatest asset. As poor dear Mr. Smith was so fond of saying, he—I can't bring myself to talk of him, Mr. Evans, but—but as he used to say, I—I—"
"Yes, yes, Mrs. Smith, I understa—"
"But as my cousin says in his article, which in my mind should be spread broadcast, what higher mission for woman than—than—just what are his words, Emelene?"
Miss Brand leaned forward, her gaze boring into space.
"What higher mission," she quoted, as if talking in a chapel, "for woman than that she sit enthroned in the home, wielding her invisible but mighty scepter from that throne, while man, kissing the hand that so lovingly commands him, shall bear her gifts and do her bidding. That is the strongest vote in the world. That is the universal suffrage which chivalry grants to woman. The unpolled vote! Long may it reign!"
Round spots of color had come out on Miss Emelene's long cheeks.
"A man who can think like that has the true—the true—what shall I say, Alys?"
"But, ladies, I protest that I'm not—"
"Has the true chivalry of spirit, Emelene, that the women are too stark raving mad to appreciate. You can't come here, Mr. Evans, to two women to whom womanliness and love of home, thank God, are still uppermost and try to convert us to—"
Here Mr. Evans executed a triple gyration, to the annoyance of Hanna, who withdrew from the gesture, and raised his voice to a shout that was not without a note of command.
"Convert you! Why women alive, what I've been bursting a blood vessel trying to say during the length of this interview is that I'd as soon dip my soul in boiling oil as try to convert you away from the cause.Mycause!Ourcause!"
"Why—"
"I'm here to tell you that I'm with my partner head-over-heels on the plank he has taken."
"But we thought—"
"We thought you and Betty Sheridan—why, my cousin Genevieve Remington told me that—"
"Yes, yes, Miss Emelene. But not even the wiles of a pretty woman can hold out indefinitely against Truth! A broad-minded man has got to keep the door of his mind open to conviction, or it decays of mildew. I confess that finally I am convinced that if there is one platform more than another upon which George Remington deserves his election it is on the brave and chivalrous principles he has so courageously come out with in the currentSentinel. Whatever may have been between Betty Sheridan and—"
"Mr. Evans, you don't mean to tell me that you and Betty Sheridan have quarreled! Such a desirable match from every point of view, family and all! It goes to show what a rattle-pated bunch of women they are! Any really clever girl with an eye to her future, anti or pro, could shift her politics when it came to a question of matri—"
"Mrs. Smith, there comes a time in every modern man's life when he's got to keep his politics and his pretty girls separate, or suffrage will get him if he don't watch out!"
"Yes, and Mr. Evans, if what I hear is true, a good-looking woman can talk you out of your safety deposit key!"
"That's where you're wrong, Mrs. Smith, and I'll prove it to you. Despite any wavering I may have exhibited, I now stand, as George puts it in his article, 'ready to conserve the threatened flower of womanhood by also endeavoring to conserve her unpolled vote!' If you women want prohibition, it is in your power to sway man's vote to prohibition. If you women want the moon, let man cast your proxy vote for it! In my mind, that is the true chivalry. To quote again, 'Woman is man's rarest heritage, his beautiful responsibility, and at all times his co-operation, support and protection are due her. His support and protection.'"
Miss Emelene closed her eyes. The red had spread in her cheeks and she laid her head back against the chair, rocking softly and stroking the thick-napped cat.
"The flower of womanhood," she repeated. "'His support and his protection.' If ever a man deserved high office because of high principles, it's my cousin George Remington! My cousin Genevieve Livingston Remington is the luckiest girl in the world, and not one of us Brands but what is willing to admit it. My two nephews, too, if their Aunt Emelene has anything to say, and I think she has—"
"Why, there isn't a stone in the world I wouldn't turn to see that boy in office," Mrs. Smith interrupted.
At that Mr. Evans rose.
"You mean that, Mrs. Smith?"
Miss Emelene rose with him, the cat pouring from her lap.
"Of course she means it, Penfield. What self-respecting woman wouldn't!"
Mr. Evans sat down again suddenly, Miss Emelene with him, and leaning violently forward, thrust his eager, sun-tanned face between the two women.
"Well, then, ladies, here's your chance to prove it! That's what brings me today. As two of the self-respecting, idealistic and womanly women of this community, I have come to urge you both to—"
"Oh, Mr. Evans!"
"Penfield, you are the flatterer!"
"To induce two such representative women as yourselves to help my partner to the election he so well deserves."
"Us?" "It is in your power, ladies, to demonstrate to Whitewater that George Remington's chivalry is not only on paper, but in his soul."
"But—how?"
"By throwing yourselves upon his generosity and hospitality, at least during the campaign. You have it in your power, ladies, to strengthen the only uncertain plank upon which George Remington stands today."
A clock ticked roundly into a silence tinged with eloquence. The Maltese leaped back into Miss Emelene's lap, purring there.
"You mean, Penfield, for us to go visit George—er—er—"
"Just that! Bag and baggage. As two relatives and two unattached women, it is your privilege, nay, your right."
"But—"
"He hasn't come out in words with it, but he has intimated that such an act from the representative antis of this town would more than anything strengthen his theories into facts. As unattached women, particularly as women of his own family, his support and protection, as he puts it, are due you,dueyou!"
Mrs. Smith clasped her plentifully ringed fingers, and regarded him with her prominent eyes widening.
"Why, I—unprotected widow that I am, Mr. Evans, am not the one to force myself even upon my cousin if—"
"Nor I, Penfield. It would be a pleasant enough change, heaven knows, from the boarding-house. But you can ask your mother, Penfield, if there ever was a prouder girl in all Whitewater than Emmy Brand. I—"
"But I tell you, ladies, the obligation is all on George's part. It's just as if you were polling votes for him. What is probably the oldest adage in the language, states that actions speak louder than words. Give him his chance to spread broadcast to your sex his protection, his support. That, ladies, is all I—we—ask."
"But I—Genevieve—the housekeeping, Penfield. Genevieve isn't much on management when it comes to—" "Housekeeping! Why, I have it from your fair cousin herself, Miss Emelene, that her idea of their new little home is the Open House."
"Yes, but—as Emelene says, Mr. Evans, it's an imposition to—"
"Why do you think, Mrs. Smith, Martin Jaffry spends all his evenings up at Remingtons' since they're back from their honeymoon? Why, he was telling me only last night it's for the joy of seeing that new little niece of his lording it over her well-oiled little household, where a few extra dropping in makes not one whit of difference."
At this remark, embedded like a diamond in a rock, a shade of faintest color swam across Mrs. Smith's face and she swung him her profile and twirled at her rings.
"And where Genevieve Remington's husband's interests are involved, ladies, need I go further in emphasizing your welcome into that little home?"
"Heaven knows it would be a change from the boarding-house, Alys. The lunches here are beginning to go right against me! That sago pudding today—and Gallup knowing how I hate starchy desserts!"
"For the sake of the cause, Miss Emelene, too!"
"Gallup would have to hold our rooms at half rate."
"Of course, Mrs. Smith. I'll arrange all that."
"I—I can't go over until evening, with three trunks to pack."
"Just fine, Mrs. Smith. You'll be there just in time to greet George at dinner."
Miss Emelene fell to stroking the cat, again curled like a sardelle in her lap.
"Kitti-kitti-kitti—, does muvver's ittsie Hanna want to go on visit to Tousin George in fine new ittie house? To fine Tousin Georgie what give ittsie Hanna big saucer milk evvy day? Big fine George what like ladies and lady kitties!"
"Emelene, it's out of the question to take Hanna. You know how George Remington hates cats! You remember at the Sunday School Bazaar when—" A grimness descended like a mask over Miss Brand's features. Her mouth thinned.
"Very well, then. Without Hanna you can count me out, Penfield. If—"
"No, no! Why nonsense, Miss Emelene! George doesn't—"
"This cat has the feelings and sensibilities of a human being."
"Why of course," cried Penfield Evans, reaching for his hat. "Just you bring Hanna right along, Miss Emelene. That's only a pet pose of George's when he wants to tease his relatives, Mrs. Smith. I remember from college—why I've seen Georgekissa cat!"
Miss Emelene huddled the object of controversy up in her chin, talking down into the warm gray fur.
"Was 'em tryin' to 'buse muvver's ittsie bittsie kittsie? Muvver's ittsie bittsie kittsie!"
They were in the front hall now, Mr. Evans tugging at the door.
"I'll run around now and arrange to have your trunks called for at five. My congratulations and thanks, ladies, for helping the right man toward the right cause."
"You'resure, Penfield, we'll be welcome?"
"Welcome as the sun that shines!"
"If I thought, Penfield, that Hanna wouldn't be welcome I wouldn't budge a step."
"Of course she's welcome, Miss Emelene. Isn't she of the gentler sex? There'll be a cab around for you and Mrs. Smith and Hanna about five. So long, Mrs. Smith, and many thanks. Miss Emelene, Hanna."
On the outer steps they stood for a moment in a dapple of sunshine and shadow from chestnut trees.
"Good-by, Mr. Evans, until evening."
"Good-by, Mrs. Smith." He paused on the walk, lifting his hat and flashing his smile a third time.
"Good-by, Miss Emelene."
From the steps Miss Brand executed a rotary motion with the left paw of the dangling Maltese.
"Tell nice gentleman by-by. Tum now, Hanna, get washed and new ribbon to go by-by. Her go to big Cousin George and piddy Cousin Genevieve. By-by! By-by!"
The door swung shut, enclosing them. Down the quiet, tree-shaped sidewalk, Mr. Penfield Evans strode into the somnolent afternoon, turning down Huron Street. At the remote end of the block and before her large frame mansion of a thousand angles and wooden lace work, Mrs. Harvey Herrington's low car sidled to her curb-stone, racy-looking as a hound. That lady herself, large and modish, was in the act of stepping up and in.
"Well, Pen Evans! 'Tis writ in the book our paths should cross."
"Who more pleased than I?"
"Which way are you bound?"
"Jenkins' Transfer and Cab Service."
"Jump in."
"No sooner said than done."
Mrs. Herrington threw her clutch and let out a cough of steam. They jerked and leaped forward. From the rear of the car an orange and black pennant—Votes for Women—stiffened out like a semaphore against the breeze.
Genevieve Remington sat in her pretty drawing-room and watched the hour hand of the clock slowly approach five. Five was a sacred hour in her day. At five George left his office, turned off the business-current with a click and turned on, full-voltage, the domestic-affectionate.
Genevieve often told her girl friends that she only began really to live after five, when George was restored to her. She assured them the psychical connection between George and herself was so close that, sitting alone in her drawing-room, she could feel a tingling thrill all over when the clock struck five and George emerged from his office downtown.
On the afternoon in question she received her five o'clock electric thrill promptly on time, although history does not record whether or not George walked out from his office at that moment. With all due respect for the world-shaking importance of Mr. Remington's movements, it must be stated that history had, on that afternoon, other more important events to chronicle.
As the clock struck five, the front doorbell rang. Marie, the maid, went to open the door. Genevieve adjusted the down-sweeping, golden-brown tress over her right eye, brushed an invisible speck from the piano, straightened a rose in a vase, and after these traditionally bridal preparations, waited with a bride's optimistic smile the advent of a caller. But it was Marie who appeared at the door, with a stricken face of horror.
"Mrs. Remington! Mrs. Remington!" she whispered loudly. "They've come to stay. The men are getting their trunks down from the wagon."
"Whohas come to stay?Where?" queried the startled bride.
"The two ladies who came to call yesterday!"
"Oh!" said the relieved Genevieve. "There's some mistake, of course. If it's Cousin Emelene and Mrs.——"
She advanced into the hall and was confronted by two burly men with a very large trunk between them.
"Which room?" said one of them in a bored and insolent voice.
"Oh, you must have come to the wrong house," Genevieve assured them with her pretty, friendly smile.
She was so happy and so convinced of the essential rightness of a world which had produced George Remington that she had a friendly smile for every one, even for unshaven men who kept their battered derby hats on their heads, had viciously smelling cigars in their mouths, and penetrated to her sacred front hall with trunks which belonged somewhere else.
"Isn't this G. L. Remington's house?" inquired one of the men, dropping his end of the trunk and consulting a dirty slip of paper.
"Yes, it is," admitted Genevieve, thrilling at the thought that it was also hers. "This is the place all right, then," said the man. He heaved up his end of the trunk again, and said once more, "Which room?"
The repetition fell a little ominously on Genevieve's ear. What on earth could be the matter?
She heard voices outside and craning her soft white neck, she saw Cousin Emelene, with her gray kitten under one arm and a large suitcase in her other hand, coming up the steps. There was a beatific expression in her gentle, faded eyes, and her lips were quivering uncertainly. When she caught sight of Genevieve's sweet face back of the bored expressmen, she gave a little cry, ran forward, set down her suitcase and clasped her young cousin in her arms.
"Oh Genevieve dear, that noble wonderful husband of yours! What have you done to deserve such a man... out of this Age of Gold!"
This was a sentiment after Genevieve's own heart, but she found it rather too vague to meet the present somewhat tense situation.
Cousin Emelene went on, clasping her at intervals, and talking very fast. "I can hardly believe it! Now that my time of trial is all over I don't mind telling you that I was growing embittered and cynical. All those phrases my dear mother had brought me to believe, the sanctity of the home, the chivalrous protection of men, the wicked folly of women who leave the home to engage in fierce industrial struggle."... At about this point the expressmen set the trunk down, put their hands on their hips, cocked their hats at a new angle and waited in gloomy ennui for the conversation to stop. Cousin Emelene flowed on, her voice unsteady with a very real emotion.
"See, dear, you must not blame me for my lack of faith... but see how it looked to me. There I was, as womanly a woman as ever breathed, and yetIhad no home to be sanctified,Ihad never had a bit of chivalrous protection from any man. And with the New Haven stocks shrinking from one day to the next, the way they do, it looked as though I would either have to starve or engage in the wicked, unwomanly folly of earning my own living. Do you know, dear Genevieve, I had almost come to the point—you know how the suffragists do keep banging away at their points—I almost wondered if perhaps they were right and if men really mean those things about protection and support in place of the vote.... And then George's splendid, noble-spirited article appeared, and a kind friend interpreted it for me and told what it really meant, forme! Oh, Genevieve."... The tears rose to her mild eyes, her gentle, flat voice faltered, she took out a handkerchief hastily. "It seemed too good to be true," she said brokenly into its folds. "I've longed all my life to be protected, and now I'm going to be!"
"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 seeyouthere! 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.Dearold 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 Ineverwould 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'tspeakto 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 knowwhatto 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 tothink, 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 theBalance 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 Tradeout 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. "Sothat'swhat 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 theyhavea special gift for it! Maybe, a generation or so from now, it'll be themenwho 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 dinneren famillewith 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 themthinkof such a thing!" gasped Betty, almost beyond words.
"I did!" said Penfield Evans, tapping himself on the chest. "It wasmygiant 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,toorich! 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.
"Didyou 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!"
"Ohpoorold 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! Shebelievesall 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 ahomejust 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, "itstrue, all that bally-rot about women being better than men. Youare!"
With which very modern compliment, he turned and left her.