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."
"_Who_ has 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 yet
_I_ had no home to be sanctified, _I_ had 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, for _me_!
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 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.