Part 17 (2/2)
Genevieve colored slightly as she studied the condition of a pair of long white gloves which she had taken from a drawer.
”Of course the Woman's Forum is only for discussion,” she said mildly.
”It doesn't initiate any action.” Then she raised her eyes to his face and George felt his universe reel about him.
For his wife's beautiful eyes were turned upon him, not in limpid adoration, not in perfect acceptance of all his views, unheard, unweighed; but with a question in their blue depths.
The horrid clairvoyance which hara.s.sment and self-distrust had given him that afternoon enabled him, he thought, to translate that look.
The Eliot woman, in her speech before the Woman's Forum, had doubtless placed the responsibility for the continuation of those factory conditions upon the district attorney's office, had doubtless repeated those d.a.m.n fool, impractical questions which the suffragists were displaying in McMonigal's windows.
And Genevieve was asking them in her mind! Genevieve was questioning him, his motives, his standards, his intentions! Genevieve was not intellectually a charming mechanical doll who would always answer ”yes”
and ”no” as he pressed the strings, and maintain a comfortable vacuity when he was not at hand to perform the kindly act. Genevieve was thinking on her own account. What, he wondered angrily, as he dressed--for he could not bring himself to ask her aid in escaping the Herringtons and, indeed, was suddenly balky at the thought of the intimacies of a domestic evening--_what_ was she thinking? She was not such an imbecile as to be unaware how large a share of her comfortable fortune was invested in the local industry. Why, her father had been head of the Livingston Loomis-Ladd Collar Company, when that dreadful fire--! And she certainly knew that his uncle, Martin Jaffry, was the chief stockholder in the Jaffry-Bradshaw Company.
What was the question in Genevieve's eyes? Was she asking if he were the knight of those women who worked and sweated and burned, or of her and the comfortable women of her cla.s.s, of Alys Brewster-Smith with her little cottages, of Cousin Emelene with her little stocks, of masquerading Betty Sheridan whose sortie of independence was from the safe vantage-grounds of entrenched privilege?
And all that evening as he watched his wife across the crystal and the roses of the Herrington table, trying to interpret the question that had been in her eyes, trying to interpret her careful silence, he realized what every husband sooner or later awakes to realize--that he had married a stranger.
He did not know her. He did not know what ambitions, what aspirations apart from him, ruled the spirit behind that charming surface of flesh.
Of course she was good, of course she was tender, of course she was high-minded! But how wide-enveloping was the cloak of her goodness?
How far did her tenderness reach out? Was her high-mindedness of the practical or impractical variety?
From time to time, he caught her eyes in turn upon him, with that curious little look of re-examination in their depths. She could look at him like that! She could look at him as though appraisals were possible from a wife to a husband!
They avoided industrial Whitewater County as a topic when they left the Herrington's. They talked with great animation and interest of the people at the party. Arrived at home, George, pleading press of work, went down into the library while Genevieve went to bed. Carefully they postponed the moment of making articulate all that, remaining unspoken, might be ignored.
It was one o'clock and he had not moved a paper for an hour, when the library door opened.
Genevieve stood there. She had sometimes come before when he had worked at night, to chide him for neglecting sleep, to bring bouillon or chocolate. But tonight she did neither.
She did not come far into the room, but standing near the door and looking at him with a new expression--patient, tender, the everlasting eternal look--she said: ”I couldn't sleep, either. I came down to say something, George. Don't interrupt me----” for he was coming toward her with sounds of affectionate protest at her being out of bed.
”Don't speak! I want to say--whatever you do, whatever you decide--now--always--I love you. Even if I don't agree, I love you.”
She turned and went swiftly away.
George stood looking at the place where she had stood,--this strange, new Genevieve, who, promising to love, reserved the right to judge.
CHAPTER VIII. BY MARY HEATON VORSE
The high moods of night do not always survive the clear, cold light of day. Indeed it requires the contribution of both man and wife to keep a high mood in married life.
Genevieve had gone in to make her profession of faith to her husband in a mood which touched the high alt.i.tudes. She had gone without any conscious expectation of anything from him in the way of response. She had vaguely but confidingly expected him to live up to the moment.
She had expected something beautiful, a lovely flower of the spirit--comprehension, generosity. Living up to the demand of the moment was George's forte. Indeed, there were those among his friends who felt that there were moments when George lived up to things too brightly and too beautifully. His Uncle Jaffry, for instance, had his openly skeptical moments. But George even lived up to his uncle's skepticism.
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