The Sturdy Oak Part 3

"Say, Mr. Jaffry, you haven't swung over----"

"Not at all. It's tactics. I ought to see him."

"Why not run out to his house----"

"Just been there. Ran away. Some one there I'm afraid of."

"Telephone?"

Mr. Jaffry shook his head and lowered his voice.

"With Betty hearing it at this end, and the committee from the Antis sitting it out down there--the telephone's on the stair landing----"

He pursed his lips, waved his cap slowly to and fro and observed it with a whimsical expression on his sandy face, then glanced out of the window. He stepped closer, looking sharply down. A very fat boy with pink cheeks and a downcast expression was sitting on a fire-plug. Mr.

Jaffry leaned out.

"Pudge," he called, "come up here a minute."

On the Remington and Evans stationery he penciled a note, which he sealed. Then he scribbled another--to Mrs. George Remington, asking her to hand George the inclosure the moment he appeared from his work. The two he slipped into a large envelope. The very fat boy stood before him.

"Want to make a quarter, Pudge? Take this letter, right now, to Mrs.

George Remington. Give it to her personally. It's the old Remington place, you know."

He felt in his change pocket. It was empty. He hesitated, turned to Evans, then, reconsidering, produced a dollar bill from another pocket and gave it to the boy.

"Now run," he said.

The boy, speechless, turned and moved out of the office. His sister spoke to him, but he did not turn his head. He rolled down the stairs to the street, stood a moment in front of Humphrey's, drew a sudden breath that was almost a gasp, waddled into the store, advanced directly on the soda fountain, and with a blazing red face and angrily triumphant eyes confronted Billy Simmons.

"I'll take a chocolate marshmallow nut sundae," he said. "And you needn't be stingy with the marshmallow, either!"

At ten minutes past four, the anxious Antis in the Remington living-room heard the candidate for district attorney running down the stairs, and even Mrs. Brewster-Smith was hushed. The candidate stopped, however, on the landing. They heard him lift the telephone receiver. He called a number. Then----

"_Sentinel_ office?... Mr. Ledbetter, please.... h.e.l.lo, Ledbetter!

Remington speaking. I have that statement ready. Will you send a man around?... Yes, right away. And I wish you'd put it on the wires.

Display it just as prominently as you can, won't you?... Thanks. That's fine! Good-by."

He ran back upstairs.

But shortly he appeared, wearing the distrait, exalted expression of the genius who has just pa.s.sed through the creative act. He looked very tall and strong as he stood before the mantel, receiving the congratulations of Mrs. Brewster-Smith and the timid admiration of Cousin Emelene. His few words were well chosen and were uttered with dignity.

"And now, dear Mr. Remington, I'm sure I don't need to ask you if you are taking the right stand on suffrage." This from Mrs. Brewster-Smith.

The candidate smiled tolerantly.

"If unequivocal opposition is 'right'----"

"Oh, you dear man! I was sure we could count on you. Isn't it splendid, Genevieve!"

The reporters came.

It was a busy evening for the young couple. There were relatives for dinner. Other relatives and an old friend or two came later. Throughout, George wore that quietly exalted expression, and carried himself with the new dignity.

To the adoring Genevieve his chin had never appeared so long and strong, his thought had never seemed so elevated, his quiet self-respect had never been so commanding. He was no longer merely her George, he was now a public figure. Soon he would be district attorney; then, very likely, Governor; then--well, Senator; and finally--it was possible--some one had to be--President of the United States. He had begun, this day, by making a great decision, by stepping boldly out on principle, on moral principle, and announcing himself a defender of the home, of the right.

At midnight, the last guest departed. George and Genevieve stepped out into the summer moonlight and strolled arm in arm down the walk.

Waddling up the street appeared a very fat boy.

"Why, Pudge," cried Genevieve, "what on earth are you doing out at this time of night!"

"I'm going home, I tell you!" muttered the boy, on the defensive. He carried a large bag of what seemed to be chocolate creams, from which he was eating.

As he pa.s.sed, a twinge of memory disturbed him. He fumbled in his pockets.

"I was to give you this," he said then; and leaving a crumpled envelope in Genevieve's hand, he walked on as rapidly as he could.

A few minutes later, standing under the light in the front hall, George Remington read this penciled note:

"I stood ready to contribute more than I promised--any amount to put you over. But if you give out a statement against suffrage you're a d.a.m.n fool and I withdraw every cent. A man with no more political sense and skill than that isn't worth helping. You should have advised me.

"M. J."

CHAPTER II. BY HARRY LEON WILSON

It may have been surmised that our sterling young candidate for district attorney had not yet become skilled in dalliance with the equivocal; that he was no adept in ambiguity; that he would confront all issues with a rugged valiance susceptible of no misconstruction; that, in short, George Remington was no trimmer.

If he opposed an issue, one knew that he opposed it from the heart out.

He said so and he meant it. And, being opposed to the dreadful heresy of equal suffrage, no reader of the Whitewater _Sentinel_ that morning could say, as the shrewd so often say of our older statesmen, that George was "side-stepping."

Not George's the mellow gift to say, in effect, that of course woman should vote the instant she wishes to, though perhaps that day has not yet come. Meantime the speaker boldly defies the world to show a man holding woman in loftier regard than he does, or ready to accord her a higher value in all true functions of the body politic. Equal suffrage, thank G.o.d, is inevitable at some future time, but until that glorious day when we can be a.s.sured that the s.e.x has united in a demand for it, it were perhaps as well not to cloud the issues of the campaign now opening; though let it be understood, and he cannot put this too plainly, that he reveres the memory of his gray-haired mother without whose tender ministrations and wise guidance he could never have reached the height from which he now speaks. And so let us pa.s.s on to the voting on these ca.n.a.l bonds, the true inwardness of which, thanks to the venal activities of a corrupt opposition, even an exclusively male const.i.tuency has thus far failed to comprehend. And so forth.

Our hero, then, had yet to acquire this finesse. As we are now privileged to observe him, he is as easy to understand as the multiplication table, as little devious and, alas! as lacking in suavity. Yet, let us be fair to George. Mere innocence of guile, of verbal trickery, had not alone sufficed for his pa.s.sionate bluntness in the present crisis. At a later stage in his career as a husband he might have been equally blunt; yet never again, perhaps, would he have been so emotional in his opposition to woman polluting herself with the mire of politics.

Be it recalled that but five weeks had elapsed since George had solemnly promised to cherish and protect the fairest of the non-voting s.e.x--at least in his State--and he was still taking his mission seriously. As he wrote the words that were now electrifying, in a manner of speaking, the readers of the _Sentinel_, and of neighboring journals with enough enterprise to secure them, he had beheld his own Genevieve, fine, flawless, tenderly nourished flower that she was, being dragged from her high place with the most distressing results.

He saw her rushed from the sacred shelter of her home and made to attend primaries; he saw her compelled to strive tearfully with problems that revolted all her finer instincts; he saw her insulted at polling booths; saw her voting in company with persons of both s.e.xes whom one could never know.

He saw her tainted, bruised, beaten down in the struggle, losing little by little all sense of the holy values of Wife, Mother, Home. As he wrote he heard her weakening cries for help as she perished, and more than once his left arm instinctively curved to shield her.

Was it not for his wife, then; nay, for wifehood itself, that he wrote?