The Sturdy Oak Part 18

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," Genevieve 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 n.o.blest of his s.e.x? 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 s.p.a.ce.

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 G.o.d. 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 d.a.m.ned 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 [Ill.u.s.tration: "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.