In the meantime, concern and suspense and irruptive wrath had their
chief abode in the inner room of Remington and Evans. George had
received a request, through Penny Evans, from the chief of police to
remain in his office, where he could be reached instantly if information
concerning Genevieve were received, and where his help could instantly
be secured were it required; and Penny had enlarged that request to the
magnitude of a command and had stood by to see that it was obeyed, and
himself to give assistance.
George had recognized the sense of the order, but he rebelled at the
enforced inactivity. Where was Genevieve?--why wasn't he out doing
something for her? He strode about the office, fuming, sick with the
suspense and inaction of his role.
But Genevieve was not his unbroken concern. He was still afire with the
high resentment which a few hours earlier had made him go striding into
the office of the _Sentinel_. Fragments of his statement to the editor
leaped into his mind; and as he strode up and down he repeated phrases
silently, but with fierce emphasis of the soul.
Now and again he paused at his window and looked down into Main Street.
Below him was a crowd that was growing in size and disorder: the last
afternoon of any campaign in Whitewater was exciting enough; much more
so were the final hours of this campaign that marked the first entrance
of women into politics in Whitewater on a scale and with an organized
energy that might affect the outcome of the morrow's voting.
Across the way, Mrs. Herrington, the fighting blood of five generations
of patriots roused in her, had reinstated the Voiceless Speech within
the plate-glass window broken by the stones of that morning and was
herself operating it; and, armed with banners, groups of women from
the Woman's Club, the Municipal League and the Suffrage Society
were marching up and down the street sidewalks. It was their final
demonstration, their last chance to assert the demands of good
citizenship--and it had attracted hundreds of curious men, vote-owners,
belonging to what, in such periods of political struggle, are referred
to on platforms as "our better element."
Also drifting into Main Street were groups of voters of less
prepossessing aspect--Noonan's men, George recognized them to be. These
jeered and jostled the marching women and hooted the remarks of the
Voiceless Speech--but the women, disregarding insults and attacks, went
on with their silent campaigning. The feeling was high--and George could
see, as Noonan's men kept drifting into Main Street, that feeling was
growing higher.
Looking down, George felt an angered exultation. Well, his statement in
the _Sentinel_, due upon the street almost any moment, would answer all
these and give them something to think about!--a statement which would
make an even greater stir than the declaration which he had issued
those many weeks ago, when, fresh from his honeymoon, he had begun his
campaign for the district attorneyship.--[Illustration: Across the way,
Mrs. Herrington, the fighting blood of five generations of patriots
roused in her, had reinstated the Voiceless Speech.] These people below
certainly had a jolt coming to them!
George's impatient and glowering meditations--the hour was then near
four--were broken in upon by several interruptions, which came on him in
quick succession, as though detonated by brief-interval time-fuses. The
first was the entrance of that straw-haired misspeller of his letters
who had succeeded Betty Sheridan as guardian of the outer office.
"Mr. Doolittle is here," she announced. "He says he wants to see you."
"You tell Mr. Doolittle _I_ don't want to see _him_!" commanded the
irritated George.
But Mr. Benjamin Doolittle was already seeing his candidate. As
political boss of his party, he had little regard for such a formality
as being announced to any person on whom he might call--so he had walked
through the open door.
"Well, what d'you want, Doolittle?" George demanded aggressively.
Mr. Doolittle's face wore that look of bland solicitude, that
unobtrusive partnership in the misfortune of others, which had made
him such an admirable and prosperous officiant at the last rites of
residents of Whitewater.
"I just wanted to ask you, George--" he was beginning in his soft,
lily-of-the-valley voice, when the telephone on George's desk started
ringing. George turned and reached for it, to find that Penny had
already picked up the instrument.
"I'll answer it, George.... Hello... Mr. Remington is here, but is busy;
I'll speak for him--I'm Mr. Evans.... What--it's you! Where are you?...
Stay where you are; I'll come right over for you in my car."
"Who was that?" demanded George.
"Genevieve," Penny said rapidly, seizing his hat, "and I'm going----"
"So am I!" exclaimed George.
"Not till we've had a little understanding," sharply put in Doolittle,
blocking his way.
"Stay here, George," his partner snapped out--"she's perfectly
safe--just a little out of breath--telephoned from a drug store over in
the Red-field district. I'll have her back here in fifteen minutes." And
out Penny dashed, slamming the door.
But perhaps it was the straw-haired successor of Betty Sheridan who
really prevented George from plunging after his partner.
"You ordered the _Sentinel_ sent up as soon as it was out," she said.
"Here are six copies."
George seized the ink-damp papers, and as the straw-haired one walked
out in rubber-heeled silence he turned savagely upon his campaign
manager.
"Well, Doolittle?" he demanded.
"I just want to ask you, George----"
George exploded. "Oh, you just want to ask me! Well, everything you want
to ask me is answered in that paper. Read it!"
Doolittle took the copy of the _Sentinel_ which was thrust into his
hands. George watched him with triumphant grimness, awaiting the effect
of the bomb about to explode in the other's face. Mr. Doolittle unfolded
the _Sentinel_--looked it slowly through--then raised his eyes
to George. His face seemed somewhat puzzled, but otherwise it was
overspread with that sympathetic concern which, as much as his hearse
and his folding-chairs, was a part of his professional equipment.
"Why, George. I don't just get what you're driving at."
Forgetting that he was holding several copies of the Sentinel, George
dropped them all upon the floor and seized the paper from Mr. Doolittle.
He glanced swiftly over the first page--and experienced the highest
voltage shock of his young public career. Feverishly he skimmed the
remaining pages. But of all that he had poured out in the office of the
_Sentinel_, not one word was in print.
Automatically clutching the paper in a hand that fell to his side, he
stared blankly at his campaign manager. Mr. Doolittle gazed back with
his air of sympathetic concern, bewildered questioning in his eyes. And
for a space, despite the increasing uproar down in the street, there was
a most perfect silence in the inner office of Remington and Evans.
Before either of the two men could speak, the door was violently flung
open and Martin Jaffry appeared. His clothing was disarranged, his
manner agitated--in striking contrast to the dapper and composed
appearance usual to that middle-aged little gentleman.
"George," he panted, "heard anything about Genevieve?"
"She's safe. Penny's got charge of her by this time."
His answer was almost mechanical.
"Thank God!" Uncle Martin collapsed in one of the office chairs.
"Mind--if sit here minute--get my breath."
George did not reply, for he had not heard. He was gazing steadily at
Mr. Doolittle; some great, but as yet shapeless, force was surging up
dazingly within him. But he somehow held himself in control.
"Well, Doolittle," he demanded, "you said you came to ask something."
Mr. Doolittle's manner was still propitiatingly bland. "I'll mention
something else first, George, if you don't mind. You just remarked I'd
find your answer in the _Sentinel_. There must 'a' been some little
slip-up somewhere. So I guess I better mention first that the _Sentinel_
has arranged to stand ready to get out an extra."
"An extra! What for?"
"Principally, George, I reckon to print those answers you just spoke
of."
George still kept that mounting something under his control. "Answers to
what?"
"Why, George," the other replied softly, persuasively. "I guess we'd
better have a little chat--as man to man--about politics. Meaning no
offense, George, stalling is all right in politics--but this time
you've carried this stalling act a little too far. As the result of your
tactics, George, why here's all this disorder in our streets--and the
afternoon before election. If you'd only really tried to stop these
messing women----"
"I didn't try to stop them by kidnapping them!" burst from George--and
Uncle Martin, his breath recovered, now sat up, clutching his homespun
cap.
"Kidnapping women?" queried the bland, bewildered voice of the party
boss. "I say, George, I don't know what you're talking about." "Why,
you--" But George caught himself. "Speak it out, Doolittle--what do you
want?"
"Since you ask it so frankly, George, I'll try to put it plain: You
been going along handing out high-sounding generalities. There's nothing
better and safer than generalities--usually. But this ain't no usual
case, George. These women, stirring everything up, have got the solid
interests so unsettled that they don't know where they're at--or where
you're at. And a lot of boys in the organization feel the same way. What
the crisis needs, George, is a plain statement of your intentions as
district attorney, which we can get into that _Sentinel_ extra and which
will reassure the public--and the organization."
"A plain statement?" There was a grim set to George's jaw.
"Oh, it needn't go into too many details. Just what you might call a
ringing declaration about this being the greatest era of prosperity
Whitewater has ever known, and that you conceive it to be the duty of
your administration to protect and stimulate this prosperity. The people
will understand, and the organization will understand. I guess you get
what I mean, George."
"Yes, I get what you mean!" exploded George, his fist crashing upon the
table. "You mean you want me to be a complacent accessory to all the
legal evasions that you and your political gang and the rich bunch
behind you may want to get away with! You want me to be a crook in
office! By God, Doolittle----"
"Shut up, Remington," snapped the political boss, his soft manner now
vanished, his whole aspect now grimly menacing. "I know the rest of what
you're going to say. I was pretty certain what it 'ud be before I came
here, but I had to know for sure. Well, I know now, all right!"
His lank jaws snapped again.
"Since you are not going to represent the people that put you up, I
demand your written withdrawal as candidate for the district attorney's
office."
"And I refuse to give it!" cried George. "I was nominated by a
convention, not by you. And I don't believe the party is as crooked as
you--anyhow I'm going to give the decent members of the party a chance
to vote decently! And you can't remove me from the ballot, either, for
the ballot is already printed and----"
"That'll do you no----"
"I thought some time ago I was through with this political mess," George
drove on. "But, Doolittle, damn you, I've just begun to get in it! And
I'm going to see it through to the finish!"
Suddenly a thin little figure thrust itself between the bellicose pair
and began shaking George's hand. It was Martin Jaffry.
"George--I guess I'm my share of an old scoundrel--and a trimmer--but
hearing some one stand up and talk man's talk--" He broke off to shake
George's hand again. "I thought you were the king of boobs--but, boy,
I'm with you to wherever you want to go--if my money will last that
far!"
"Keep out of this, Jaffry," roughly growled Doolittle. "It's too late
for your dough to help this young pup. Remington, we may not take you
off the ballot, but the organization kin send out word to the boys----"
"To knife me! Of course, I expect that! All right--go to it! But I'm on
the ballot--you can't deprive people of the chance of voting for me. And
I shall announce myself an independent and shall run as one!"
"We may not be able to elect our own nominee," harshly continued
Doolittle, "but we kin send out word to back the Democratic candidate.
Miller ain't much, but, at least, he's a soft man. And that _Sentinel_
extra is going to say that a feeling has spread among the respectable
element that it has lost confidence in you, and is going to say that
prominent party members feel the party has made a mistake in ever
putting you up. So run, damn you--run as a Democrat, a Republican, an
Independent--but how are you going to git it across to the public in a
way to do yourself any good--without backing? How are you going to git
it across to the public?"
His last words, flung out with overmastering fury, brought George up
short, and he saw this. Doolittle's wrath had mounted to that pitch
which should never be reached by the resentment of a practical
politician; it had attained such force that it drove him on to taunt his
man. "How are you going to git it before the public?" he again demanded,
eyes agleam with triumphant rancor--"with us shutting you off and
hammering you on one side?--and them damned messy women across the
street hammering you from the other side? Oh, it's a grand chance you
have--one little old grand chance! Especially with those dear damned
females loving you like they do! Jest take a look at what the bunch over
there are doing to you!"
Doolittle followed his own taunting suggestion; and George, too, glanced
through his window across the crowded street into the shattered window
whence issued the Voiceless Speech. In that jagged frame in the raw
November air still stood Mrs. Harvey Herrington, turning the giant
leaves of her soundless oratory. The heckling request which then struck
George's eyes began: "_Will Candidate Remington answer_----"
George Remington read no more. His already tense figure suddenly
stiffened; he caught a sharp breath. Then, without a word to the two men
with him, he seized his hat and dashed from his office. The street was
even more a turbulent human sea, with violently twisting eddies, than
had appeared from George's windows. It seemed that every member of the
organizations whom Mrs. Herrington (and also Betty Sheridan, and later
E. Eliot, and, at the last, Genevieve) had brought into this fight, were
now downtown for the supreme effort. And it seemed that there were now
more of the so-called "better citizens." Certainly there were more of
Noonan's men, and these were still elbowing and jostling, and making
little mass rushes--yet otherwise holding themselves ominously in
control.
Into this milling assemblage George flung himself, so dominated by the
fiery urge within him that he did not hear Genevieve call to him from
Penny's car, which just then swung around the corner and came to a sharp
stop on the skirts of the crowd. George shouldered his way irresistibly
through this mass; the methods of his football days when he had been
famed as a line-plunging back instinctively returned--and, all the
fine chivalry forgotten which had given to his initial statement to the
voters of Whitewater so noble a sound, he battered aside many of those
"fairest flowers of our civilization, to protect whom it is man's duty
and inspiration."
His lunging progress followed by curses and startled cries of feminine
indignation, he at length emerged upon the opposite sidewalk, and,
breathless and disheveled, he burst into the headquarters of the
Voiceless Speech.
Some half-dozen of Mrs. Herrington's assistants cried out at his abrupt
entrance. Mrs. Herrington, forward beside the speech, turned quickly
about.
"Mr. Remington, you here!" she cried in amazement as he strode toward
her. "What--what do you want?"
"I want--I want--" gasped George. But instead of finishing his sentence
he elbowed Mrs. Herrington out of the way, shoved past her, and stepped
forth in front of the Voiceless Speech. There, standing in the frame of
jagged plate-glass, upon what was equivalent to a platform raised
above the crowd, he sent forth a speech which had a voice. "Ladies and
gentlemen!" he called, raising an imperative hand. The uproar subsided
to numerous exclamations, then to surprised silence; even Noonan's men
checked their disorder at this appearance of their party's candidate.
"Ladies and gentlemen," and this Voiceful Speech was loud,--"I'm here
to answer the questions of this contrivance behind me. But first let
me tell you that though I'm on the ballot as the candidate of the
Republican party, I do not want the backing of the Republican machine.
I'm running as an Independent, and I shall act as an Independent.
"Here are my answers:
"I want to tell you that I shall enforce all the factory laws.
"I want to tell you that I shall enforce the laws governing housing
conditions--particularly housing conditions in the factory district.
"I want to tell you that I shall enforce the laws governing child labor
and the laws governing the labor of women.
"And I want to tell you that I shall enforce every other law, and shall
try to secure the passage of further laws, which will make Whitewater
a clean, forward-looking city, whose first consideration shall be the
welfare of all.
"And, ladies and gentlemen--" he shouted, for the hushed voices had
begun to rise--"I wish I could address you all as fellow-voters!--I
want to tell you that I take back that foolish statement I made at the
opening of the campaign.
"I want to tell you that I stand for, and shall fight for, equal
suffrage!
"And I want to tell you that what has brought this change is what some
of the women of White-water have shown me--and also some of the things
our men politicians have done--our Doolittles, our Noonans----"
But George's speech terminated right there. Noise there had been before;
now there burst out an uproar, and there came an artillery attack of
eggs, vegetables, stones and bricks. One of the bricks struck George on
the shoulder and drove him staggering back against the Voiceless Speech,
sending that instrument of silent argument crashing to the floor.
Regaining his balance, George started furiously back for the window; but
Mrs. Herrington caught his arm.
"Let me go!" he called, trying to shake her off.
But she held on. "Don't--you've said enough!" she cried, and pulled him
toward the rear of the room. "Look!"
Through the window was coming a heavier fire of impromptu grenades that
rolled, spent, at their feet. But what they saw without was far more
stirring and important. Noonan's men in the crowd, their hoodlumism now
unleashed, were bowling over the people about them; but these really
constituted Noonan's outposts and advance guards.
From out of two side streets, though George and Mrs. Herrington could
not see their first appearance upon the scene, Noonan's real army
now came charging into Main Street, as per that gentleman's grim
instructions to "show them messin' women what it means to mess in
politics." Hundreds of Whitewater's women were flung about, many
sent sprawling to the pavement, and some hundreds of the city's most
respectable voters, caught unawares, were hustled about and knocked down
by the same ruthless drive.
"My God!" cried George, impulsively starting forward. "The damned
brutes!"
But Mrs. Herrington still held his arm. "Come on--they're making a drive
for this office!" breathlessly cried the quick-minded lady. "You can do
no good here. Out the rear way--my car's waiting in the back street."
Still clutching his sleeve, Mrs. Herrington opened a door and ran across
the back yard of McMonigal's building in a manner which indicated that
that lady had not spent her college years (and similarly spent the years
since then propped among embroidered cushions consuming marshmallows and
fudge.)
The lot crossed, she hurried through a little grocery and thence into
the street. Here they ran into a party that, seeing the riot on Main
Street and the drive upon the window from which George had spoken, had
rushed up reinforcements from the rear--a party consisting of Penny,
E. Eliot, Betty Sheridan and Genevieve. "Genevieve!" cried George, and
caught her into his arms.
"Oh, George," she choked. "I--I heard it all--and it--it was simply
wonderful!"
"George," cried Betty Sheridan, "I always knew, if you got the right
kind of a jolt, you'd be--you'd be what you are!"
E. Eliot gripped his hand in a clasp almost as strong as George's arm.
"Mr. Remington, if I were a man, I'd like to have the same sort of stuff
in me."
"George, you old roughneck--" began Penny.
"George," interrupted Genevieve, still chokingly, her protective, wifely
instinct now at the fore, "I saw you hit, and we're going to take you
straight home----"
"Cut it all out," interrupted the cultured Mrs. Herrington. "This isn't
Mr. Remington's honeymoon--nor his college reunion--nor the annual
convention of his maiden aunts. This is Mr. Remington's campaign, and
I'm his new campaign manager. And his campaign manager says he's not
going away out to his home on Sheridan Road. His campaign headquarters
are going to be in the center of town, at the Commercial Hotel, where he
can be reached--for there's quick work ahead of us. Come on."
Five minutes later they were all in the Commercial Hotel's best suite.
"Now, to business, Mr. Remington," briskly began Mrs. Herrington. "Of
course, that was a good speech. But why, in heaven's name, didn't you
come out with it before?"
"I guess I really didn't know where I stood until today," confessed
George, "and today I tried to come out with it."
And George went on to recount his experience with the _Sentinel_--his
scene with Doolittle--and Doolittle's plan for an extra of the Sentinel,
which was doubtless then in preparation.
"So they've got the _Sentinel_ muzzled, have they--and are going to get
out an extra repudiating you," Mrs. Herrington repeated. There came a
flash into her quick, dark eyes. "I want our candidate to stay right
here--rest up--get his thoughts in order. There are a lot of things to
be done. I'll be back in an hour, Mr. Remington. The rest of you come
along--you, too, Mrs. Remington."
Mrs. Herrington did not altogether keep her word in the matter of time.
It was two hours before she was back. To George she handed a bundle of
papers, remarking: "Thought you'd like to see that _Sentinel_ extra."
"I suppose Doolittle has done his worst," he remarked grimly. He
glanced at the paper. His face went loose with bewilderment at what he
saw--headlines, big black headlines, bigger and blacker than he had
ever before seen in the politically and typographically conservative
_Sentinel_. He read through a few lines of print, then looked up.
"Why, it's all here!" he gasped. "The kidnapping of Miss Eliot and
Genevieve by Noonan's men--my break with Doolittle, my denunciation of
the party's methods, my coming out as an independent candidate--that
riot on Main Street! How on earth did that ever get into the
_Sentinel_?"
"Some straight talk, and quick talk, and the exercise of a little of
the art of pressure they say you men exercise," was the prompt reply.
"I telephoned Mr. Ledbetter of the _Sentinel_ advising him to hold
the extra Mr. Doolittle had threatened until he heard from Mr. Wesley
Norton, proprietor of the Norton Dry Goods Store. You know, Mr. Norton
is the _Sentinel_'s largest single advertiser and president of the
Whitewater Business Men's Club.
"Then a committee of us women called on Mr. Norton and told him that
we'd organize the women of the city and would carry on a boycott
campaign against his store--we didn't really put it quite as crudely
as that--unless he'd force the _Sentinel_ to stop Mr. Doolittle's lying
extra and print your statement.
"Mr. Norton gave in, and telephoned the _Sentinel_ that if it didn't do
as he said he'd cancel his advertising contract. Then, to make sure,
we got hold of Mr. Jaffry, called on Mr. Ledbetter, who called in the
business manager--and your Uncle Martin told them that unless they
printed the truth, and every bit of it, and printed it at once, he was
going to put up the money to start an opposition paper that _would print
the truth_. That explains the extra 'Well'," ejaculated George, still
staring, "you certainly are a wonder as a campaign manager!"
"Oh, I only did my fraction. That Miss Eliot did as much as I--she's a
find--she's going to be one of Whitewater's really big women. And
Betty Sheridan, you can't guess how Betty's worked--and your wife, Mr.
Remington, she's turning out to be a marvel!
"But that's not all," Mrs. Herrington continued rapidly. "We bought
ten thousand copies of that extra for ourselves--your uncle paid for
them--and we're going to distribute them in every home in town. When
the best element in Whitewater read how the women were trampled down
by Noonan's mob--well, they'll know how to vote! Mr. Noonan will never
guess how much he has helped us."
"You seem to have left nothing for me to do," said George.
"You'll find out there'll be all you'll want," replied the brisk Mrs.
Herrington. "We're organizing meetings--one in every hall in the city,
one on almost every other street corner, and we're going to rush you
from one to the next--most of the night--and there'll be no letup for
you tomorrow, even if it is election day. Yes, you'll find there'll be
plenty to do!"
The next twenty-four hours were the busiest that George Remington had
ever known in his twenty-six years.
But at nine o'clock the next evening it was over--the tumult and the
shouting and the congratulations--and all were gone save only Martin
Jaffry; and District-Attorney-Elect Remington sat in his hotel suite
alone in the bosom of his family.
He was still dazed by what had happened to him--at the part he had
unexpectedly played--dazed by the intense but well-ordered activity of
the women: their management of his whirlwind tour of the city; their
organization of parades with amazing swiftness; their rapid and complete
house-to-house canvass--the work of Mrs. Herrington, of Betty, of
that Miss Eliot, of hundreds of women--and especially of Genevieve.
He marveled especially at Genevieve because he had never thought of
Genevieve as doing such things. But she _had_ done them--he felt
that somehow she was a different Genevieve: he didn't know what the
difference was--he was in too much of a whirl for analysis--but he had
an undefined sense of _aliveness_, of a spirited, joyous initiative in
her.
She and all the rest seemed so strange as to be unbelievable. And yet,
she--and all of it--true!...
From dramatic events and intangible qualities of the spirit, his
consciousness shifted to material things--his immediate surroundings.
Not till this blessed moment of relaxation did he become aware of
the discomforts of this suite--nor did Genevieve fully appreciate the
flamboyantly flowered maroon wall-paper and the jig-saw furniture.
"George,"' she sighed, "now that you're not needed down here, can't we
go home?"
"Home!" The word came out half snort, half growl--hardly the tone
becoming one whose triumph was so exultingly fresh. With a jar he had
come back to a present which he fully understood. "Damn home! I haven't
any home!"
Genevieve stared. Uncle Martin snickered, for Uncle Martin had the gift
of understanding.
"You mean those flowers of womanhood whom chivalrous man----"
"Shut up," commanded George. He thought for a brief space; then his jaw
set. "Excuse me a moment."
Drawing hotel stationery toward him, he scribbled rapidly and then
sealed and addressed what he had written.
"Uncle Martin, your car's outside doing nothing; would you mind going
on ahead and giving this little note to Cousin Alys Brewster-Smith, and
then staying around and having a little supper with Genevieve and me?
We'll be out soon, but there are a few things I want to talk over with
Genevieve alone before we come."
Uncle Martin would oblige. But when he had gone, there seemed to
be nothing of pressing importance that George had to communicate to
Genevieve. Nor half an hour later, when he led his bride of four months
up to their home, had he delivered himself of anything which seemed to
require privacy.
As they stepped up on the porch, softly lighted by a frosted bulb in its
ceiling, Cousin Emelene, her cat under her arm, came out of the front
door and hurried past them, without speech.
"Why, Cousin Emelene!" George called after her.
She paused and half turned.
"You--you--" she half choked upon expletives that would not come
forth. "The man will come for my trunks in the morning." Thrusting a
handkerchief to her face, she hurried away.
"George, what can have happened to her?" cried the amazed Genevieve.
But George was saved answering her just then. Another figure had emerged
from the front door--a rather largish figure, all in black--her left
hand clutching the right hand of a child, aged, possibly, five. And this
figure did not cower and hurry away. This figure halted, and glowered.
"George Remington," exclaimed Cousin Alys, "after your
invitation--you--you apostate to chivalry! That outrageous letter! But
if I am leaving your home, thank God I'm leaving it for a home of my
own! Come on, Martin!"
With that she stalked away, dragging the sleepy Eleanor.
Not till then did George and Genevieve become aware that Uncle Martin
was before them, having until now been obscured by Mrs. Brewster-Smith's
outraged amplitude. His arms were loaded with coats, obviously feminine.
"Uncle Martin!" exclaimed George.
"George," gulped his uncle--"George--" And then he gained control of a
dazed sort of speech. "When I gave her that letter I didn't know it was
a letter of eviction. And the way she broke down before me--a woman, you
know--I--I--well, George, it's my home she's going to."
"You don't mean----"
"Yes, George, that's just what I mean. Though, of course, I'm taking
her back now to Mrs. Gallup's boarding-house until--until--good-night,
George; good-night, Genevieve." The little man went staggering down the
walk with his burden of wraps; and after a minute there came the sound
of his six-cylinder roadster buzzing away into the darkness.
"I didn't tell 'em they had to go tonight," said George doggedly. "But
I did remark that even if every woman had a right to a home, every
woman didn't have the right to make my home her home. Anyhow," his
tone becoming softer, "I've at last got a home of my own. Our own," he
corrected.
He took her in his arms. "And, sweetheart--it's a better home than when
we first came to it, for now I've got more sense. Now it is a home in
which each of us has the right to think and be what we please."
* * * * *
At just about this same hour just about this same scene was being
enacted upon another front porch in Whitewater--there being the slight
difference that this second porch was not softly illuminated by any
frosted globule of incandescence. Up the three steps leading to this
second porch Mr. Penfield Evans had that moment escorted Miss Elizabeth
Sheridan.
"Good-night, Penny," she said.
He caught her by her two shoulders.
"See here, Betty--the last twenty-four hours have been mighty busy
hours--too busy even to talk about ourselves. But now--see here, you're
not going to get away with any rough work like that. Come across, now.
Will you?"
"Will I what?"
"Say, how long do you think you're a paid-up subscriber to this little
daily speech of mine?... Well, if I've got to hand you another copy,
here goes. You promised me, on your word of honor, if George swung
around for suffrage, you'd swing around for me. Well, George has come
around. Not that I had much to do with it--but he surely did come
around! Now, the point is, Miss Betty Sheridan, are you a woman of your
promise--are you going to marry me?"
"Well, if you try to put it that way, demanding your pound of flesh----"
"One hundred and twenty pounds," corrected Penny.
"I'll say that, of course, I don't love you, but I guess a promise is a
promise--and--and--" And suddenly a pair of strong young arms were flung
about the neck of Mr. Penfield Evans. "Oh, I'm so happy, Penny dear!"
"Betty!"
After that there was a long silence... silence broken only by that
softly sibilant detonation which belongs most properly to the month of
June, but confines itself to no season... to a long, long silence
born of and blessed by the gods... until one Percival Sheridan, coming
stealthily home from a late debauch at Humphrey's drug store, and
mounting the steps in the tennis sneakers which were his invariable wear
on dry and non-state occasions, bumped into the invisible and unhearing
couple.
"Say, there--" gasped the startled youth, backing away.
Betty gave an affrighted cry--it was a long swift journey down from
where she had just been. Her right hand, reaching drowningly out, fell
upon a familiar shoulder.
"It's Pudge!" she cried. "Pudge"--shaking him--"snooping around,
listening and trying to spy----"
"You stop that--it ain't so!" protested the outraged Pudge, his
utterance throttled down somewhat by the chocolate cream in his mouth.
"Spying on people! And, besides, you've been stuffing yourself with
candy again! You're ruining your stomach with that sticky sweet
stuff--you're headed straight for a candy-fiend's grave. Now, you go
upstairs and to bed!"
She jerked him toward the door, opened it, and as he was thrust through
the door Pudge felt something, something warm, press impulsively against
a cheek. Not until the door had closed upon him did he realize what
Betty had done to him. He stood dazed for a moment--unbalanced between
impulses. Then the sturdy maleness of fourteen rewon its dominance.
"Guess I know what they was doing, all right--aw, wouldn't it make you
sick!" And, in disgust which another chocolate cream alleviated hardly
at all, he mounted to his bed.
Outside there was again silence... faintly disturbed only by that softly
sibilant, almost muted percussion which recalls inevitably the month of
June....
THE END