Part 9 (2/2)
”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 c.o.c.ked an ear toward the upper regions and frowned, but went on smoothly.
”Such happy girlhood hours as I have pa.s.sed 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 a.s.sure 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 pa.s.sers-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 s.h.i.+ning 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!”
<script>