The marriage verdict : A novel

By Frank H. Spearman

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The marriage verdict
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The marriage verdict
        A novel

Author: Frank H. Spearman


        
Release date: October 17, 2026 [eBook #79812]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79812

Credits: Tim Lindell, chenzw, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARRIAGE VERDICT ***




  THE
  MARRIAGE VERDICT

  A NOVEL

  BY

  FRANK H. SPEARMAN

  NEW YORK
  CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
  1923




  COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
  CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published March, 1923

  [Illustration]




  TO
  MY WIFE
  EUGENIE LONERGAN SPEARMAN




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE

      I. THE SPRING OF 1916                                            3

     II. THE EVENING AT HARRISON’S                                    18

    III. DURAND AND COMPANY                                           32

     IV. JANEWAY VISITS EAGLES NEST                                   43

      V. LOUISE ENCOUNTERS JANEWAY                                    56

     VI. THE BISHOP’S STORY                                           66

    VII. ENTER MAYMIE                                                 80

   VIII. THREE YEARS AFTER                                            93

     IX. THE QUARREL                                                 110

      X. FACE TO FACE                                                128

     XI. LOUISE GATHERS CATTAILS                                     137

    XII. JANEWAY SPEAKS                                              152

   XIII. JUDGE HARRISON SUSPECTS                                     159

    XIV. GERTRUDE ASTONISHED                                         166

     XV. LOUISE SPEAKS                                               178

    XVI. AT THE BAZAAR                                               197

   XVII. JANEWAY INTERVIEWS THE BISHOP                               208

  XVIII. DAY-DREAMS                                                  219

    XIX. THE ORDEAL LOOMS                                            237

     XX. DISQUIETING NEWS                                            255

    XXI. CAN I WIN AGAIN?                                            270

   XXII. LOUISE AWAITS DURAND                                        284

  XXIII. THE INTERPELLATION                                          293

   XXIV. THE LIPS ARE THE LIPS OF THE BISHOP,
           BUT THE VOICE IS THE VOICE OF ST. PAUL                    302

    XXV. IN THE LAST HOUR                                            313




THE MARRIAGE VERDICT




THE MARRIAGE VERDICT




CHAPTER I

THE SPRING OF 1916


“No, Mrs. Simms,” interposed Mrs. Harrison, in the low, surprised, and
distinct manner of speaking which she quite understood how to make
irritating. “You are entirely wrong. Henry Janeway is under, not over
forty--and well under!”

Mrs. Simms tossed her head.

“He can’t be very much under,” she persisted, unabashed, and
temperamentally pugnacious. She was ready to say more--had it, in
fact, on the tip of her tongue--but Mrs. Harrison, whose position in
the Durand circle, together with her gray hair and equally positive
disposition, demanded precedence, had no scruples about cutting her
off. It was done, of course, in a courteous but in a cruelly effective
manner.

“Henry,” observed Mrs. Harrison, continuing with dignity to address
the three younger women with whom she was drinking tea at Mrs. Robert
Durand’s, in Fond du Lac, “is exactly thirty-five years old--for all
his great reputation.” The last words were barbed for Mrs. Simms.
Jacob Simms, her husband, and Henry Janeway were rival lawyers, both
widely and favorably known in and about Chicago and Fond du Lac. “He
was born,” explained Mrs. Harrison, who usually referred to her husband
as the Judge, “in Fond du Lac, the winter of the big snow, 1881. I
remember distinctly, because his father gave Judge Harrison a dog that
winter, and the dog ate up all of the Judge’s underwear.” Young Mrs.
Robert Durand, Gertrude Durand, and Mrs. Simms exclaimed in a chorus.

“He was a ferocious animal,” Mrs. Harrison went on evenly. “The dog’s
mother ate all her puppies in that litter except this particular one; I
was naturally sorry that he escaped. He would plunge into the snow and
tear the Judge’s underwear off the clothes-line with the utmost fury,
week after week--he seemed to hate red--and the poor laundress couldn’t
chase him through the drifts. So when the snow and ice went off in the
spring, we found red scraps and remnants scattered all the way down the
hill; my husband really dates his sciatica from that awful winter.”

“But,” demanded young Louise Durand--Robert’s wife--with a bubbling
laugh, “why didn’t you get rid of the horrid creature?”

“My dear!” Mrs. Harrison’s face set in amiable surprise. “Evidently
you are not familiar with the etiquette governing the presentation of
puppies. I couldn’t. Mr. Janeway’s father and the Judge were great
friends. Happily the brute was accidentally shot by an exasperated
neighbor, while making off with a boiled ham that had been set outside
the kitchen door to cool. So I know,” asserted Mrs. Harrison, quite
calmly confident, “that Mr. Janeway is exactly thirty-five. No, dear,”
she added, in a motherly way, to Louise, “no more tea.”

Mrs. Simms saw the hopelessness of contending with so experienced a
swordswoman. “I wonder,” she ventured to purr, in retreat, “whether
his father’s fondness for savage brutes could be responsible for Mr.
Janeway’s being so pugnacious.”

Mrs. Harrison only followed up her victory.

“Oh, my dear,” she objected, “don’t imagine that Henry’s father loved
bloodthirsty dogs; he was quite an academic person; the bulldog was
merely an incident. Judge Harrison and Mr. Janeway one evening fell
disputing the authorship of a verse in praise of bulldogs. It proved to
be, as Henry’s father had asserted, one of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s--and
to assuage my husband’s humiliation at having ascribed it to some one
else, Mr. Janeway very handsomely presented us with this rare bull
puppy. But he loved and had all sorts of dogs. He once gave me the
dearest little Skye terrier.”

“Well, _is_ it true,” asked Louise Durand of Mrs. Harrison, “that Mr.
Janeway always wears a long linen duster when he’s trying a case before
a farmer jury?”

“He wasn’t wearing one yesterday,” replied Mrs. Harrison, unperturbed.
“I drove to court with Judge Harrison in the afternoon. He said he
thought I ought to hear Henry’s closing; and I thought Mr. Janeway the
best-dressed man in the room.”

“He must be very odd, to have so many stories told about him,” said
Louise, to make talk. “Where does he live?”

“Until his mother died two years ago, he kept a home for her here in
Prospect Street. In Chicago he lives at the Chicago Club. He has always
kept his membership here in the Country Club, of course. And after his
mother’s death he fitted up one of those new apartments in Court House
Square.”

“And a bachelor,” mused Louise--not as one interested, but as if
lacking a new topic for comment.

“I’ve heard,” interposed Gertrude Durand, Robert’s unmarried sister, a
pleasing young woman, most intense and energetic in manner, “that he
had a love-affair when he was young. The story was he was engaged to a
young girl. She had incipient consumption. He did everything he could
to save her, but she died, and he never married.”

“He must be queer,” Mrs. Durand remarked, as if wanting to dismiss the
subject.

But Mrs. Harrison firmly shrugged her shoulders. “Who told you that
story, Gertrude?” she asked.

“Jim Kennedy.” Kennedy was understood to aspire to Gertrude’s hand, and
Mrs. Harrison took measure accordingly.

“I am sure Jim is a reliable authority on most topics,” she observed
prudently, “but I can’t vouch for that story. And I knew Henry all the
time he lived with his mother in their old home.” The telephone bell
rang. “I wonder, my dears,” asked Mrs. Harrison, listening, “whether
that can be a verdict?”

It proved to be, as the maid presently announced, only a message from
Mrs. Harrison’s husband, saying that he was driving up to take her home.

But, in matter of fact, newsboys were crying the evening extras, with
the verdict in the dynamiting case, just as Judge Harrison’s car
turned from his office into College Avenue. Without stopping for the
newspapers, he directed the chauffeur to drive to the home of Robert
Durand.

The day had been raw and the wind still blew off the lake, where great
piles of anchor-ice, loosened and driven in by a dying gale, lay in
fantastic heaps, as far as the eye could reach, along the frosted beach.

The home of the Durands--a young and childless couple of the very
prosperous class--stood well back from the Shell Bay Road, on the
bluff skirting the lake north of the town. The house, white and of a
symmetrical design, with a Florentine façade, had been built to the
fancy and under the direction of the wife, Louise Durand, when she had
come to Fond du Lac four years earlier, a bride. As a departure from
the Colonial, the English, and the non-descript types of better homes
along the road, the Robert Durand home was distinctive. The few who
refused to like it laid its singularity to the California rearing, and
what they termed the California temperament, of Louise Durand, its
mistress, only now reaching twenty-three years of age.

When Harrison walked into the Durand living-room, his wife, the
gray-haired matron who had been so positive about Henry Janeway’s age,
was chatting, on a davenport, with Louise. And Mrs. Simms--a vivacious
brunette--her husband, the general attorney of the Durand Companies,
was recounting an incident, in her lively manner, to Gertrude Durand,
Robert’s sister.

Judge Sidney Harrison--so titled because early in life he had occupied
a seat on the circuit bench--made his entry with an accustomed
deliberation of step. He was above average height, rather tall, indeed;
spare in figure and with a slight, curious stoop just at the top of the
shoulders; this threw his head a little forward. He still retained from
life’s unequal battle a little shock of hair, running front and back,
very like a cockscomb; but for the most part he was conspicuously bald.
His face, marked by keen and somewhat deep-set eyes, was not large.
His features were only vaguely dried and wrinkled, and his complexion
being of a tolerable hue, contributed to an agreeable expression--one
strengthened by a quiet voice and an easy manner of speaking.

The women, with the exception of Mrs. Harrison, sprang up the moment
they saw him.

“The news! The news!” cried Gertrude Durand. “What’s the news? Now,
Uncle Sid, don’t be exasperating--_what_ is the news?”

He regarded his questioners quizzically. “Am I as bad as that? Well, I
have news--news of great pith and moment. The verdict is in, and the
men that blew us up are convicted and will be sentenced shortly.”

Under the shower of congratulations, Judge Harrison settled himself in
an easy chair. Louise took one close to him, and Harrison recounted
the crowded court-room details. As he began, he drew from a waistcoat
pocket his almost invariable and affectionate companion, a long and
slender cigar which he did not venture to light--hardly bulkier than a
lead-pencil--which, whether lighted or unlighted, was oftener in his
fingers than between his lips. If he smoked, he smoked contemplatively,
and his entire manner was at one with this trait; normally he was
poised, drily laconic, and reservedly confident. As he spoke now rather
directly to Louise, her youthful freshness stimulated him, and he
drew from her alive and inquiring eyes the energy he needed to answer
her eager questions in his most agreeable manner--this both to please
Louise and to maintain an elderly masculine credit with an attractive
young woman.

“Of course, I remember the first dynamiting at the North Mill,” said
Louise, answering him in turn, as he went into the history of the case.
She was sitting attentively forward and looking at the legal head of
the family circle as he liked to be looked at, with an interest sincere
enough to seem deep. “I’m not likely to forget that,” she added, with
a little _moue_. “It happened just after Robert and I left for England
last year to get the contracts.”

“Two of the men were caught in San Francisco soon after you left,”
Harrison went on, “and two in Chicago. One we haven’t got yet. It took
a long time to bring them to trial. Then we had a hung jury”--Harrison
made a wry face, expressive of the legal difficulties endured.
“Finally,” he went on, with returning satisfaction, “we got Janeway
into the thing.

“Our prosecuting attorney was ill--is yet, in fact--unfortunately, poor
fellow, for him, fortunately for us. The Governor took my view that for
this particular job Janeway was good material, and appointed him as
temporary prosecutor.” Judge Harrison coughed delicately to deprecate a
possible impression that any influence of his had contributed more than
the merest suggestion to the arrangement.

“And to-day,” he continued calmly, “after the longest trial ever
staged in Fond du Lac County, the jury returned a verdict convicting
all four defendants. It was a fight. Any lawyer,” remarked Harrison
reflectively, “that goes before a Fond du Lac jury nowadays with the
name of ‘Durand’ tagged to his case could be persuaded without much
difficulty to trade it off for a millstone to be hanged about his neck.”

Louise listened, and a far-off expression revealed itself for a moment
in her eyes. Then she smiled. “I’m sorry we’re so unpopular.”

“It’s all Bob’s fault,” burst out Gertrude Durand. “Father used to get
along with the men.”

Harrison sat unruffled. “Your father had different men to get along
with,” he said. “Though Bob, it’s true, is unlike his father in many
respects. However, he’s certainly a steel maker.”

Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Simms put in question and comment on the
gratifying conviction of the dynamiters--for no one, they said, had
thought they could ever be convicted by a Fond du Lac jury--and Judge
Harrison was in good mood to make answer and return comment. As general
counsel for the steel companies under the principal ownership and
entire management of Robert Durand, his nephew by marriage, he had,
after a long and bitter struggle, started for the penitentiary the men
who had applied force as their last word in a long labor argument, and
blown up a portion of the Durand Fond du Lac plant.

“And where did you get hold of Mr. Janeway?” asked Gertrude.

“He’s a Fond du Lac boy; went to Chicago some years ago----”

“A boy, Judge Harrison!” gushed Mrs. Simms, with snappy eyes. As wife
of the general attorney of the Durand Companies, it was generally
believed that her nose had been put slightly out of joint by the
admission, so to speak, of Janeway into the Durand official family.
“Why, we’ve just been talking about his age--if you set him back much
further, we shall have to put him in knee pants!”

Judge Harrison pursued his thought on an even keel. He recollected
that Simms had fought and lost more than one important case for the
corporation, and that Janeway’s success had created a somewhat
delicate situation. The Judge had, in fact, taken one case out of
Simms’s hands after his failure to sway a jury; he never followed a
loser.

“I’ve known Janeway since he was a boy,” he explained placatingly. “He
read for a while here in my office and practised here. When he decided
to try his fortunes in Chicago, I gave him a letter to Levi Stearns,
counsel for the Standard Oil Company. He was in, toward the end, on
that thirty-million-dollar-fine case. Your husband”--Judge Harrison,
looking at Mrs. Simms, impaled her rather remorselessly on the point of
his remark--“told me the gossip was--and I happen to know it’s so--that
a point raised by Janeway in the case secured the reversal. Of course,
Janeway was just a kid, and Levi stole the credit. I’ve often thought
what a blessing it is to mankind that Levi wasn’t camping at the foot
of Mount Sinai the night Moses brought down the stone tablets. If that
had happened Levi and not Moses would have been the prophet of the Ten
Commandments. Janeway figured, too, in the dissolution case. But I’ve
known him so long, I always think of him as a boy,” added the Judge,
with leisurely satisfaction.

“I’ve heard he’s Irish,” ventured Mrs. Simms.

“He well might be,” returned Harrison, unmoved. “Greeks and Celts have
exasperatingly subtle minds. But he isn’t. There are just a few plain
Americans left, you know.”

Mrs. Simms made her excuses and got away. Not until she had left did
Judge Harrison show any irritability.

“Was Mrs. Simms born here?” he asked of Gertrude.

“No, indeed,” said Gertrude, “she is _not_ a native.”

“She seems to know so many things about Janeway that aren’t so,”
complained the Judge. “She told somebody that Bob got Janeway into this
case.”

“Oh, Uncle Sidney,” exclaimed Louise, “it was I--she told me that----”

“Well, Bob didn’t get him,” averred Harrison.

“Mr. Simms?”

“No, not Mr. Simms,” Harrison went on drily. “Janeway professes to feel
under some obligation to me for the worthless advice I used to impose
on him; and for the letters I gave him when he packed his bag for
Chicago. So when we needed him, I thought I had a pull.”

“Mr. Janeway’s a great reader,” observed Mrs. Harrison in a sage aside
to Louise.

“I can’t hand him much credit for that,” remarked Judge Harrison.
“The fellow has a facility that way. He grabs the meat of a page at a
glance. It’s very curious to see him open a law book; nine times out of
ten it will be at the very heart of the subject.”

“But, Sid,” drawled Mrs. Harrison, “tell how you ‘got acquainted’ with
him, as you expressed it, after he began to practise here for himself.”

Harrison demurred, but his wife persisted.

“That was a railroad case,” said the elderly lawyer, at length.
“We had to take a strip of land in town here that belonged to the
Catholic Bishop. We condemned. I was attorney for the railroad, Janeway
represented the Bishop. Janeway raised the point that the strip we
wanted took a section corner from his client.”

Louise listened, trying to appear interested. “What’s a section
corner?” asked Gertrude.

“It’s really nothing at all,” remarked the Judge. “A mere surveyor’s
mark; a stone, or a stake, to designate areas of land divided into
sections of six hundred and forty acres by the government. That’s the
way all the newer portion of our country is surveyed; there must be
several million section corners in the United States.

“But Janeway mapped out that precious section corner, photographed
it, exploited it, pleaded it, enlarged on the enormity of the idea
of a corporation’s forcibly taking a strip of land that included a
section corner belonging to a wholly innocent and poverty-stricken
client--who comprised, by the way, all in himself another powerful
corporation--till he had the jury almost in tears over that blamed
section corner. I may say _his_ jury, for before he finished he owned
it. There was no more sense in his contention that we were irreparably
injuring the Bishop by taking a section corner away from him,”
complained Harrison patiently, “than there would have been if we had
proposed to move a home-made mail-box ten feet on a man’s fence--not
nearly so much. But to hear Janeway lay it out, you would have thought
the Washington Monument, Taj Mahal, St. Peter’s, and the ruins of the
Parthenon all rested on that precious section corner, and that for a
railroad to take the land that included it would ruthlessly subvert
every principle of American liberty--the liberty for which our Pilgrim
fathers fought so hard and so long! The strip was actually worth about
twenty-five hundred dollars. They gave him a verdict for twenty-five
thousand. Of course, I appealed. But the company wanted the land in a
hurry, and he made us pay good and plenty for it before we got through.”

At that moment Robert Durand, just from the office, walked briskly in
on the group.

Durand was in the greatest good-humor. He was a man of athletic
build, with liquid brown eyes, a high forehead, and the alert air
of the absorbed American business man. His face reflected traces
of good living, and his underlip was rather full. Yet his general
expression was a pleasant one, and his frank, open manner, simulating
impulsiveness, made friends--though Durand sometimes failed to hold
them.

Receiving congratulations from the women on the verdict, he turned,
with a long breath, to Harrison.

“It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever put over on the labor bunch,”
he exclaimed. “We’ve got those fellows cowed now for a good ten
years--haven’t we, Uncle Sid?” He threw the question at Harrison with
bullet-like intensity.

Harrison responded without quite echoing Durand’s intensity. “Ten
years is a good while,” he observed.

Durand threw out his hand toward his uncle. “Hang on to Janeway,” he
said warningly. “We don’t want to let that fellow get away.”

Harrison fenced. “He’s a high-priced man,” he observed calmly.

“Not too high-priced for what’s ahead of us,” returned Durand, without
an instant’s hesitation. “I’ve more news,” he added. The women were
eager to hear it. “I signed a new munitions contract to-day with the
British Government.”

“Nice boy!” laughed Mrs. Harrison, amid the comments.

“We’ll be in this thing ourselves before another six months,” continued
Durand, with snapping eyes. “That means more orders than we can
possibly take care of--and a big sellers’ market.”

He suggested a drink to his uncle, and they adjourned to the
dining-room. While Durand was mixing what was called for, he again
spoke to Judge Harrison about making sure of Janeway.

“Of course Janeway’s training, while tolerably wide, has been more
particularly that of a trial lawyer,” said Harrison, who understood
quite well how to raise difficulties that he meant should count for his
own real intention. “We should have to use him as a corporation lawyer.”

Durand brushed aside all objections. “Why, that fellow can handle
anything, they tell me in Chicago. Did you ever hear him talk?”

“A good while before you did,” remarked Harrison drily. “He’s coming
up for dinner to-night. Bring Louise over and we’ll talk to him this
evening.”

Durand told his wife of the arrangement. She demurred. “I’m going
to Gertrude’s again this evening. Bishop Marion and his sister are
bringing a guest, and I promised to come over to meet her.”

“I want you with me.”

“But, Bob, I don’t want to disappoint Gertrude.”

“Oh, hell!”

“And her guests.”

“I want you to meet Janeway.”

Louise knew pretty well from experience where discussion of a request
made in that tone--long familiar to her--would end. But she had grown
less sensitive to consequences. “Why should I meet Mr. Janeway? I’ve
heard nothing but Janeway to-day. I don’t care to meet----”

“I want you along!” exclaimed her husband, silencing her with a curt
expletive. “Get ready and come.”




CHAPTER II

THE EVENING AT HARRISON’S


It was more tedious, Louise told herself, not to talk to her neighbor
at dinner than to make the effort to do so. Moreover, people of
sensitive disposition do not like to seem discourteous even to those
they imagine they will not like. The guests at the Harrisons’ included
Durand and his wife, with George Fargo, Louise’s only brother, a young
lawyer then in Harrison’s office. Janeway was seated at Mrs. Harrison’s
right, with Louise next. There was no lack of conversation; all six
were equal to anything when occasion demanded. But Janeway at the start
was silent--rather like a man tired--and let the others hold forth. He
likewise paid little superfluous attention to Louise, but this she did
not resent.

“Uncle Sidney has been telling me stories about you,” she said to him,
when something presently seemed required.

“Mean ones?”

“One was mean.”

“Let me have that first.”

“The mean one was about a time you were trying to defeat somebody for
speaker of the legislature. You were a railroad attorney then, Uncle
said, and were moving heaven and earth to beat this man, and hadn’t
succeeded. And when all the members were seated in session and the vote
was about to be taken, you walked, in full sight of everybody, down the
middle aisle of the assembly chamber to where the poor fellow sat, and
whispered something in his ear. And then everybody voted against him!”

“That ‘poor fellow’ was an out-and-out crook,” replied Janeway very
bluntly. “I suppose your uncle told you, too, how I robbed _him_ in a
condemnation suit?”

“He told us that this afternoon.”

“If he has told you those two stories you know the worst of me--as far
as his information goes.”

“But I can’t understand,” continued his questioner, “how a lawyer, like
Uncle Sidney, can enjoy telling a story about getting beaten.”

“It’s like a game of chess,” explained Janeway. “A keen player--and
Judge Harrison plays everything keenly--is always interested in a new
move, even when made by an inferior opponent, and even if it defeats
him.”

“But if law is a game, where does justice come in?”

“Don’t confuse law--or the application of law--and justice.”

“I thought law and justice were supposed to be the same thing.”

“That’s why so many people abuse the profession of law. Justice is an
abstraction, an elusive thing, often difficult to apply to particular
circumstances. You invoke law and you hope for justice. You don’t
always get it.”

“Does any one ever get it?” asked George Fargo, listening across the
table. George at twenty-five, blue-eyed and mild--most of the time--was
a Socialist and an aggressive one.

Janeway looked at him, undisturbed. “As often, it is safe to say, as
any one gets anything he’s entitled to in this sorrowful world. Human
justice is a compromise; it is nothing fixed, nothing absolute. A man
should put no more faith in it than he does in a trade. True, we are
sometimes forced to appeal to human justice, whereas we are not always
forced to trade. But we should make the appeal with the trading spirit,
rather than with childlike confidence--always bearing in mind, as in
a trade, that we may be worsted, and accepting the result with a mild
cynicism, not a bitter disappointment. The mistake is ever relying on
so frail a reed in the beginning.”

Louise cut off her brother’s retort. “And are you coming back to Fond
du Lac to live?” she said to Janeway.

“I haven’t decided to. Judge Harrison and your husband seem conspiring
to that end.”

“I suppose everybody’s been showering compliments on you over your
victory. I shan’t offer any.”

“Thank you.”

“No doubt these men were guilty,” continued Louise. She was resolved
to express herself, and meant to add that she was sorry for their
families, but Robert Durand caught and cut off his wife’s remark.
“What’s the difference?” he asked sharply.

Janeway did not hesitate to interpose a flat comment. “I should say, a
material difference.”

“Oh, come,” protested Durand. “You’re the lawyer; you have to talk to
a jury. All we wanted was to get a part of that Union bunch--any of
them--sent up, to scare the rest. They ought all to be locked up,” he
added, dropping his voice as if bored with the effort. “They’re all
crooks.”

Janeway did not look pleased. Louise, watching him, smiled. “Law,” she
quoted, “is a game, anyway.”

He turned on his critic. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you said it.”

“Not at all,” he objected promptly. “I likened law to a game of chess.
All figures of speech are misleading.” Without the slightest note of
apology in his expression, he bent his eyes for the first time on
Louise; they struck her as penetrating. Neither was there apology in
his tone; only bluntness. “I shall, no doubt, surprise you in one
respect,” he continued. “Law may be a game; but if I hadn’t been dead
sure these men were guilty, I certainly shouldn’t have prosecuted them;
I detest criminal cases, anyway.”

“Listen to that from an eminent corporation counsellor,” laughed George
Fargo.

Janeway retorted without a hitch. “Don’t fasten such a stigma on me
yet. I have no claim to it, George. And you’re a Socialist, anyway.”

“That designation is a badge of honor, Mr. Janeway.”

“As well as a sanction among young persons for loose speaking,”
returned Janeway.

Louise was somewhat in doubt concerning the straight, heavy brows that
followed the arch closely and guarded her neighbor’s deep-set eyes. She
noticed that in talking, Janeway was inclined to throw back his head,
and at such times his brows were even more striking. If not aggressive
they suggested mental attitudes that might be very stubborn. Such
qualities did not seem unpleasantly reflected in his manner, but the
discrepancy made her suspicious of the newcomer into the social circle.

He had not been described, except by Mrs. Simms--not good authority
to Louise--as a fighter, yet his voice suggested stiff mental
reservations; it was dry in quality and not always as complacent as
his words. Often at the end of a sentence it dropped oddly, almost
humorously, as if conceding that life, after all, was not to be taken
too rigidly. His nose was ample and straight, with a rounded tip
separating full nostrils. These served partly to shade an irregular
mustache, one that described at each end an independent angle; it
was a development evidently neglected--at least to the extent of
being allowed, among better-ordered features, to make its own way in
the world. But with all its irregularity, it served to modify the
expression of a mouth beyond doubt uncompromising.

Louise noticed as the dinner progressed that her neighbor drank freely
but rather carelessly--as if without regard to quantity rather than
really greedy of wine; yet as concerned the filling of his glasses the
result was much the same. However, Louise was used, at her own table
and the tables of her friends, to free drinking.

If Janeway’s impressions of Mrs. Durand could have been recorded they
would have been nebulous, as a man’s impressions on the mere meeting of
an attractive woman usually are. The delicate contour preserved from
her head to her feet; the pleasing rather than distinctive lips, and
the smile pleasantly parting them; the cheeks without much color, yet
little troubled by the aids of society; the straight, slender nose,
and the not too thin-cut but sensitive nostrils--these combined to set
Louise’s frank eyes very honestly before him.

If critical he might have pronounced her cheek-bones high--they
lengthened rather than rounded her face--and her chin, though enough,
might have carried more emphasis. But of these canons of objective
criticism Janeway was ignorant, and would have professed himself
content to remain ignorant. What mattered was that her hands were
unobtrusively rather than conspicuously jewelled, and that graceful
feminine fingers held in his field of vision a suspended fork, while
gray-blue and somewhat imperious eyes demanded his own eyes, and
fast-moving, feminine lips poured out a flow of agreeable words,
whether good-natured or critical, that were meant for him and no
one else. All this tended to make him satisfied with himself and
considerate of a passing acquaintance.

Had he been asked whether he liked Louise, Janeway would have said--had
he consented to say anything--that he did like her. But not all of our
impressions are at once defined, even by ourselves, particularly at
moments in which our mind is actively engaged in several directions.

Janeway knew Robert Durand less than he knew Harrison and Jacob Simms.
As heads of Durand’s legal staff, both Harrison and Simms had been
in contact with Janeway more frequently than Durand himself. But
Durand and Janeway were nearly of an age, and Harrison, from this,
had reasoned that the two men might find things in common to make
their personal relations agreeable; he was too experienced a diplomat
not to calculate the importance of some sort of community of tastes,
in work and play, between associates charged with serious business
responsibilities.

Durand, as he sat at the table, made an agreeable figure. He was just
now in excellent humor--the bitter fight to convict the men that
had blown up his mill had been won, against the gloomy predictions
of failure that had persisted about him. Whatever discredited the
agitators among his men gratified him, and the dinner fittingly closed
a period covering weeks and months of continuing apprehension and
irritation. All the physical characteristics of the energetic young
American man of business were presented in Durand: the straight, sleek
hair--Durand’s was abundant and of a light brown--and the cleanly
shaven features. Sustained by an easy voice and humorous tone in
speaking, he could always entertain--provided he felt so inclined, as
he did now.

Louise continued to talk to Janeway. “You used to live here,” she said.

“I spent the best years of my life in this little town.”

She looked amused. “Pray, what were they?”

“From eight to eighteen.”

She laughed. “And you call those the best years of your life?”

Janeway seemed indifferent to the sceptical note. “Thus far,” he
answered, unabashed.

“You weren’t born here, then?”

“No.”

“Your father, Henry,” interposed Mrs. Harrison, “came from my State,
you told me--Delaware.”

“My people all came from Delaware and Maryland.”

Louise continued to be polite. “So far away?”

“My grandfather lost a young wife. He manumitted his slaves and fared
away to forget things--as well as to mend his fortunes--married again,
saw Fond du Lac, and rested.”

“Janeway,” interposed Durand, speaking loud enough to cut off the
conversation across the table, “eat a good dinner.”

“I’m doing very well,” responded Janeway.

“You’re eating hardly anything,” complained Mrs. Harrison.

“After some days in court, my appetite deserts me,” returned Janeway,
in defense.

“I’m giving you the advice,” continued Durand, “because the talk this
afternoon is, you’re going to be dynamited.”

“Robert!” protested his wife.

“It may be I deserve it,” suggested Janeway.

“That’s the talk among the strikers,” persisted Durand. “You’re not to
be allowed to enjoy the fruits of your victory.”

“Others will,” returned Janeway philosophically.

Mrs. Harrison was not pleased. “Well, do let Mr. Janeway enjoy them----”

“Until the explosion?” smiled Janeway.

“At least until the dinner is served,” said Louise, with some
resentment.

“If that’s a challenge to my table efforts,” observed Janeway, speaking
to Durand, “I’m going to do better from now on.”

“Those fellows are dead sore,” Durand continued. “But we’ll see you
have a good funeral.”

“Dynamiting itself would constitute a pretty complete one, wouldn’t
it?” asked Janeway.

“Dynamiting itself condemns our whole social order,” remarked George
Fargo.

“It does, George,” returned Janeway, in the manner of one averse at the
moment to an effort. “And,” he added, “when used strictly as a social
argument, it condemns itself.”

“Present-day society,” retorted Fargo, “_is_ a failure.”

“So is dynamite as a remedy,” rejoined Janeway impassively.

“But dynamite is only a symptom.”

Janeway manifested no impatience. “Neither man nor his works can hope
to escape symptoms,” he observed. “If we set up your Socialistic state,
we shall only be jumping from the frying-pan into the fire.”

“You assert, Mr. Janeway.”

“Because you assume, Mr. Fargo. You offer the most monstrous of all
human assumptions, namely, that when all men have a fair chance--which
they don’t have now--all men will behave themselves.”

“Is there any reason why they shouldn’t?” asked Louise.

“Experience,” declared Janeway, collected as against one or more
inquisitors, “is against the assumption. Even I have seen all manner
of men, with all manner of opportunities, and they have _not_ behaved
themselves, and would not behave themselves.”

“Why?” asked Louise, without much more of an idea than to hear what
this positive man had to say.

“Now you are getting to the core,” he continued. “Because it’s human
nature, I guess. I grew up in this town under an old-fashioned
Congregational minister. He was strong on one point----”

“Hell-fire,” suggested Fargo contemptuously.

“Nothing so academic as that; not hell-fire, but original sin.
Hell-fire is, at worst, a long-distance menace. But who can escape in
_this_ life daily exemplification of the cussedness of human nature
implanted by original sin? And incidentally, why quarrel with the idea
of hell-fire, George? Are you willing to concede nothing to the longing
of the human heart for retributive justice? Most people in this world
don’t get all the hell that’s coming to them--at least, not in the
opinion of their relatives.”

“But I hope,” interposed Fargo, with impatience, “you don’t bring all
this ridiculous stuff into social argument.”

“Unhappily, George, original sin was brought into social argument long
before my brief hour. I never got very far in theology, but on that
dogma I was pretty well grounded. My old minister died--Fond du Lac
could better have spared many another man--but his weekly hammerings
fixed themselves in my mind. I have tested them in the severest school
I know anything about--experience--and they have stood the test. Men
know what is better; yet they do what is worse. Other men have so done;
I have so done. If my experience is credible, if my consciousness is
credible----”

“And your assumption of what’s better and what’s worse is credible,”
interjected Fargo.

“I accept, incorporate your suggestion, and add,” said Janeway, “--then
my old preacher was right. And I go even further. If there were no
such dogma, it would be necessary to invent one----”

“As that was invented,” persisted Fargo.

“I shan’t quarrel over a word. Invented ‘as that was,’ if you wish, to
explain the downright cussedness in human nature. And it’s precisely
that, George, that has upset and will upset all ideal commonwealths.
Your Socialistic state will be a failure for the same reason that
society to-day is a failure--because tainted human nature, which is
the basis of both, is a failure. Your Socialism urges against our
society its injustice; Christian Science urges against the doctors
their blunders; but prudent people will continue to call in blundering
doctors just the same. We must do the best we can with the injustices
and the blunders--try to correct and avoid them as long as it is human
to err. When you show me fundamentally different men and women, I’ll be
a Socialist with you. All human government is contemptible, anyway.”

After dinner Durand went down-town. Louise, in the living-room,
continued to draw out Janeway. “Brother George,” she said, “told me
yesterday that if you come here, he may be in your office--so Judge
Harrison told him.” She spoke as if feeling for a comment on her
brother. Janeway did not refuse it.

“Your brother is a likable boy,” he responded, “and very bright. I
think, if the Judge sends him to me, we shall get on.”

“When he came back from college a Socialist,” Louise went on, as if in
a somewhat pathetic confidence, “it broke my father’s heart. ‘I sent
them good material for an American citizen,’ he said to me before his
death, mournfully, ‘and they sent me back an atheist and a madman.’”

“Boys are certainly a difficult proposition to-day--everything is
changing so--everything a flux. Look at the poor Europeans! If I were
bringing up a boy nowadays to be a king, I should begin by teaching him
a trade.”

She watched Janeway narrowly while he spoke; it was not difficult for
him to perceive how closely her heart was bound up in this brother. And
she was already conscious of the influence that the new acquisition to
the Durand legal forces was exercising on her brother, and was feeling
her way into Janeway’s views and into some estimate of his character.
“I do hope,” she went on, almost uneasily, “you are not a Socialist.”

“I haven’t said anything to lead you to think so,” he returned, almost
without concern.

She tried to laugh it off. “That’s precisely it. So many people
nowadays say things they don’t really mean. George sometimes brings in
a friend that talks clever paradoxes and actual absurdities. I can’t
always tell what to make of what men say.”

“What could possibly have led you to suspect me for a Socialist?” asked
Janeway, with mild curiosity.

“Well, for one thing, you said all human society is contemptible.”
Janeway made no response. “Why did you say that?” she persisted.

“I didn’t say it. I said all human government is contemptible. And I
said it because it’s so. And I said it,” he added, as if explaining to
a young and perhaps intelligent pupil, “sort of by way of confession
and avoidance. I admitted what your brother said and introduced new
matter to break the force of his argument. I haven’t the least taint of
Socialism about me. Though George would object to calling it a ‘taint,’
wouldn’t he?”

“Are we going to get into the war?” she asked.

“I hope not.”

“Why do you hope not?”

“If we do, it will be too late.”

“How so?”

“We should have been preparing for such a war in 1913--earlier would
have been better.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“Janeway and Robert don’t seem to hit it off very well,” remarked Mrs.
Harrison to her husband, after her guests had gone.

Harrison, not liking the observation, put in an objecting question.
“How so?” he asked shortly.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just the impression I got at dinner. Bob is
always saying something malapropos. Henry didn’t like the dynamiting
joke. He carried it, but he wasn’t pleased--neither was Louise, for
that matter.”




CHAPTER III

DURAND AND COMPANY


Fond du Lac, one of the older manufacturing towns bordering on Lake
Michigan, began with New England people and traditions, but it was
gradually overrun in tone and appearance by the influence of Irish and
German immigration. This element filtered into the Middle West slowly,
and was assimilated gradually and comfortably, because the foreign-born
came in poverty and served as the village and farm hewers of wood and
drawers of water. Friction was perhaps felt at times, but it found
the necessary relief in merely “damning the Dutch” in native moments
of exasperation. It was only after the poor had become, with their
large families, the well-to-do, and the New England stock had pretty
well petered out, that the town, as many another American Middle West
community, realized that the new element owned and ran things.

Even after this transformation Fond du Lac lived a comfortably sleepy
life until the next notable invasion. This came in the form of
manufacturers, seeking, with the phenomenal development of Chicago as a
distributing centre, convenient points adjacent to the focal city for
their factory units. The first great mills to come to Fond du Lac, for
the particular advantages it offered for the making of steel, were
those of the Durand Steel Corporation, and the families of the owners
and their associates brought a new and highly sophisticated element
into the social life of the town.

The steel people, as they were soon known in the community phrase, were
city people, and waked up the tradesmen with new and extraordinary
market demands. The old townspeople--such, at least, of the pioneers
as had survived their race-suicide progenitors--lived a life
comfortably apart from that of these newcomers. The mill owners and the
manufacturers who followed the Durands with various industries, and
who invaded the naturally beautiful town almost within a decade, were
likewise people with habits and requirements quite foreign to those
governing the lives and affairs of the townspeople. The luxuries of the
townspeople were the necessities of the later arrivals.

The industrial growth of the town into something of a city came fast
after the blast-furnaces and rolling-mills were located near it.
Manufactures followed with almost bewildering rapidity. But the bulk of
the new population now added consisted largely, as was inevitable, of
laboring people; so fast, indeed, did this element pour in, that Bishop
Marion--Bishop of Fond du Lac and a client of Janeway’s on at least one
occasion--told the latter that more than once the arrival of a shipload
of southern-Europe immigrants had put the population of a whole new
parish on him overnight.

The heads of the manufacturing interests did not as a rule coalesce
socially with one another. Almost all of them made their own social
circles, confined chiefly to those families whose business interests
drew them together. The automobile makers, the packers, the starch
manufacturers, even the brewers, had their own sets. These met
sometimes in common at the country clubs, but their social activities
were distinct. And even the country clubs saw little of the higher-ups
in the manufacturing world; the country clubs were patronized chiefly
by the actual working managers of the industries--the families of the
superintendents, department heads, and junior partners. In matter of
fact, the actual owners clung mostly to Chicago as a social base, and
turned to Chicago for many of their pleasures. The winter season found
all of them in their lake-shore apartments for the city’s diversions,
and their Fond du Lac homes served the women chiefly as rest-cures and
summer retreats.

In the steel circle the Harrison family was an exception to what has
been said of their associates, in that they had lived for many years in
Fond du Lac. The Simmses had come to Fond du Lac from the North Side in
Chicago, because it was Simms’s interest to keep close to Durand. And
as Durand was charged by his associates with the operation of the Fond
du Lac plant, he necessarily spent a good deal of his time in Fond du
Lac, or, rather, between Fond du Lac and Chicago; he had varied social
and business interests in both places.

Judge Harrison, however, had begun in Fond du Lac. It was only with
the growth and importance of his practice that he had gone perforce
to Chicago to pursue his legal career. The elder Durand--Robert’s
father--meeting Judge Harrison’s sister at the Fond du Lac home, which
Judge Harrison and his wife had always maintained, married her and
established a relationship between the two families, and these, with
their connections, made up the steel set, which was small but exclusive.

Jacob Simms, a Chicago lawyer, nearing forty, had been a college chum
of Robert Durand’s, and afterward a club chum. Both men were exemplars
of the life pursued by prosperous young American men of convivial
tastes--men interested in athletics, sports, and club life and in
well-shaped women who were equal and not averse to late suppers. Simms,
with more talent in some directions than Durand, was a leader in what
centred in the kaleidoscopic Chicago world. Possessed of an excellent
physique, good taste in dress, and a tactful disposition, he had had
no difficulty in securing from Robert Durand, when the latter took the
management of the steel business after his father’s death, the position
of general attorney, under Harrison, for the Durand Corporation. It was
only after the phenomenal expansion of the business founded by Durand,
Senior, and the consequent rise of corporation questions calling for
the keenest order of legal ability, and particularly after the failure
of Simms in various instances to secure results, that Judge Harrison
took things in his own hands, and began to search for another active
legal head for the corporation interests. Simms was kept as general
attorney, but Harrison offered to Janeway the position of counsel for
the various Durand corporations.

Into this little circle of men and women of Middle West business life
Louise Durand had come from San Francisco a very youthful bride. She
once told Janeway the story of her girlhood and the circumstances
leading to her early marriage; it need not be anticipated here. But
the very considerable fortune she brought from her father’s estate to
Durand had accounted for the material expansion in 1913 of the steel
companies of which he was the new head; and this expansion, in turn,
supplied the foundation for the extraordinary success that opened for
the Durand Companies at the beginning, in 1914, of the World War. An
almost reckless building programme gone into by Durand--who was young,
energetic, and fond of the limelight--in dangerous excess of normal
plant requirements, and undertaken--as was perhaps enviously said by
more conservative steel men--because his wife had too much money--was
transformed in a twinkling into an unexampled readiness to supply the
urgency of Allied munitions demands at unheard-of profits.

From a monetary aspect, therefore, Durand’s marriage could hardly
have been more successful. Louise, on the merits of her personality,
would have been accorded a favored place among any new relatives at
all well-disposed; but her début in the Durand circle was made under
the most felicitous circumstances. Less could be said, as far as her
own happiness was concerned, regarding this most important step in
any woman’s life. The girlish pride in the passing glamour of the
preparations and the well-appointed wedding, the new home overlooking
Lake Michigan, the novel responsibilities and the new friends had
hardly worn off before she realized that she, herself, really meant
very little in Durand’s life. It was not alone that she realized
she was only one of his interests--and a perceptibly lessening one.
He not only had other interests, such as fast friends, but at least
one of these other interests centred upon other women, and of late,
particularly, on one other woman.

Almost a complete realization of this domestic situation had come
to Louise at the time of the dynamiting of the rolling-mills. The
excitement and the fears aroused by this shocking event--for besides
the material damage, the loss of life had been considerable--had
called, as it were, for a truce as to the domestic relations of Louise
and her husband; but neither the untoward event nor the frequent
threats made against Durand’s life had had more than a temporary effect
on his conduct, which he insisted was nothing new, only usual. And by
the time the dynamiters had been convicted and this story opens, Durand
was again in the swing of his natural bent.

On the night of the Harrison dinner, coming home late, he went to his
wife’s rooms. A fire was burning in the grate, and Louise was reading
in the evening paper the day’s story of the trial, with its excerpts
from Janeway’s closing speech; as victor in the legal battle he had
been featured. Durand, lighting a cigarette, sat down, and Louise read
paragraphs from the closing.

“I want Janeway here to dinner when I get back from Chicago next week,”
said Durand, after discussing the exciting events of the day. Louise
asked whom else he wished to have. He gave her the names and ended with
those of the Simmses and a friend of theirs--and his--Mrs. Montgomery.

“The Simmses, yes,” assented Louise. “Not Mrs. Montgomery.”

“She’ll do for Janeway. You’ve nobody else.”

“In a small company Mr. Janeway will take very good care of himself.”

He showed his overbearing impatience. “Mrs. Montgomery is a lifelong
friend of Janeway’s.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“What are you talking about? Janeway introduced me to her. Anyway,” he
said angrily, “I want Mrs. Montgomery included.”

“I’m free to say I don’t care for her.”

“Does that mean you won’t invite her?”

Louise discussed Mrs. Montgomery with her husband pretty freely. Each
knew the real reason for her refusal to have Mrs. Montgomery at her
table, but neither was in a position to uncover it. Durand, obstinate
now, and incensed, persisted that she be included. “I suppose I’ll have
to invite her myself,” he grumbled at last.

Louise was cold. “I’ve no doubt she’d come on such an invitation,” was
all she said.

“Look here, Louise,” exclaimed Durand, flinging his cigarette into the
fireplace, “it’s time for you and me to have an understanding.”

“We have reached a clear one on that point.”

She had blanched a little in her defiance. And she spoke hurriedly,
with a nervous tremor, but she looked at him with determined eyes.
Durand was much surprised. He could hardly believe his senses; for the
first time in their married lives his wife had unhesitatingly traversed
a decision he had made, and was not to be bullied into receding. Louise
herself was hardly less astonished at her temerity. But there had been
ample preparation for her stand; many givings-in, many useless pleas,
many tears, and many bitter reflections. There were no tears now, not
even an inclination, but there was much accumulated resentment and
doggedness of purpose. Durand tried again.

“What have you got against Mrs. Montgomery?” he demanded.

She could not bring herself to accept his brutal challenge. She had
no proof, anyway--only suspicions; but suspicions that burn a woman’s
heart and sensibilities to ashes, when she realizes she is being
unlawfully supplanted.

“I don’t like her,” she replied, controlling herself, and with hard,
helpless tones. “I have invited her here before to please you. I won’t
have her here again.”

“Nothing that pleases me pleases you,” he snorted, as if expressing a
final conclusion. “You don’t like my friends. You don’t care any more
about me, for that matter. But don’t imagine that’s going to break my
heart.” He spoke in a tone of forbearance, tempered by disgust with an
intractable partner. His wife, being young and inexperienced, would not
leave the situation to stand where he had fixed it. She thought she
ought to defend herself--which was only bringing fuel to his fire.

“You know that isn’t true, Robert,” she protested. “And you know you
ought not to insist on including that woman among my guests.” She
looked at him so pointedly that her meaning was unmistakable.

He grew more stubborn. “The trouble with you is,” he remarked
with finality, “you’re too old-fogy; Maymie Montgomery is right
up-to-date--she’s for fun and a good time. She’s a man’s woman--that’s
why you don’t like her.”

Louise was desperate. Though knowing she was right in her stand, her
collected antagonist was still torturing her, and doing it, despite all
she could urge, with an air of injured innocence.

“I don’t like her for more reasons than that,” she retorted. “But I
give her credit for one thing: she doesn’t sail under false colors; she
doesn’t even counterfeit decency.”

Durand laughed. He had the situation well in hand. “Still harping on
the old string--‘decency’!”

“Decency _is_ a trifle older than indecency,” said his wife, trembling
with anger, “but only a trifle.”

“Well, I’ve always lived my life without blue laws, and I expect to
continue to do so. I’m beginning to think you’re as much of a crank on
decency as that boob Socialist brother of yours is on everything else.
I’ll serve final notice on you now that I intend to choose my friends,
and give you the same privilege. I’m not jealous. But if you expect to
run my house you’ll entertain people I like when I say so.”

Louise only buried herself behind her newspaper. The fires of a long
endurance had flared up in her, and she was set in her attitude beyond
all of his influence. Grievances raked up and grievances invented by
Durand in his abuse of her had no effect on her rigidity. He pricked
her sensibilities with taunts and reproaches, but she would not even
reply. Angry in turn at his inability to tempt her to wrangle, he
started to leave the room.

“Robert!” She spoke just as he reached his door. He turned. She had
risen. “You say we’ve reached the parting of the ways. We have. You’ve
long been wanting to be rid of me. You’ve been asking why I don’t go to
France, to Italy, since I am always talking about it. Now I’m going. In
just as few months as I can arrange my affairs and secure passage, we
will part company for all time. You’ll have a free rein then with your
Athletic Club companions--and with Maymie Montgomery. But I warn you
now, Robert Durand, if you ever try to drag me into a divorce court,
I’ll fight you as long as I have life left to fight with!”

He had driven her to the point to which he had long tried to drive
her--the point at which she would get out of his way until he could
entirely rid himself of her--and he went to his room in a complacent
frame of mind.




CHAPTER IV

JANEWAY VISITS EAGLES NEST


Judge Harrison had a town house in Fond du Lac, and on out the Shell
Bay Road, just northwest of the city, a country place to which he
made his escape, to use his own words, at the first sign of spring.
Accordingly, every spring he watched with jealous eye for the coming of
the first robin. There was a perennial rivalry between him and Bishop
Marion as to which should spot the earliest bird. March 10 was the date
accepted by both as the most probable for the return of the winter
truants, but the schedule of these red-breasted travellers was subject
to many contingencies.

Nor were they fastidious as to their first stopping-place. Bishop
Marion, who lived in a big, smoke-grimed, red-brick house next the old
procathedral, in the lower town, maintained that the Judge, living
amid maples and elms, in the exclusive part of the town, enjoyed an
advantage. Judge Harrison--never without resource--pointed out, on the
other hand, that robins are not aristocrats, and urged that the Bishop
often snatched victory from his own grasp through his habit of getting
up earlier in the morning; and that to equalize opportunity, the Bishop
should either rise later, or should not, in fairness, look out of
doors until he had massed and breakfasted, as Judge Harrison expressed
it.

However it was, as to advantage, the Bishop was quite as often victor
in the contest as to which should call the other up to announce the
first robin as Harrison in his more attractive surroundings up-town.
Between the two men it was an affair of honor; each accepted without
question the word of the other over the telephone, even in midwinter,
when it was assumed by both--in the event of a stray bird’s appearance
being spotted by either--that the unfortunate had trusted to the
promise of a mild season, or had been hampered pecuniarily in his
plans for getting south. But if any one else in the community, even
members of their own households, announced a robin out of season, the
Bishop and the Judge presented to the claimant the united scepticism
of experienced observers, and frowned together on sensational and
unauthenticated reports.

The coming of the robin always gave to Judge Harrison the initial
impulse to desert the city house for The Farms, as he modestly termed
his handsome estate. Elizabeth, his wife, had called it after the old
Delaware home of her father, Eagles Nest. The Judge’s objection to this
was that he had never, even as a boy, seen an eagle within a hundred
miles of the place. But this difficulty did not deter Mrs. Harrison.
And her choice of a name appeared on the road pillars at the entrance,
and as well in the society columns.

Judge Harrison had a second spring token to lure him from town. His
old man servant, Oliver, survivor of many combinations of serving
men and women in the Harrison ménage, had been from time long gone
accustomed to search the Big Woods, as the hills on the extreme
northwest corner of The Farms were called, for the first arbutus
blooms. When Oliver wanted new rubber boots, he was not infrequently
“stood off” by the Judge in his requisition. But, familiar with his
master’s crotchets, the venerable darky learned to wait till winter was
on the wane. When he told the Judge he needed new boots to look for
arbutus, permission to buy them was never long deferred. In this way
Oliver became an arbutus authority, as his master professed to be a
first-robin authority. At the earliest sign of a spring-like sun, that
might warm the melting snows and encourage the tiny pink-white blossoms
to peep forth, Oliver was tramping the depths of the Big Woods and
spying upon the openings to bring in the coveted flowers.

It meant for him a ten-dollar bill--and one much easier to get than
at other times a one-dollar tip for more important adventuring. Thus
Oliver always outdistanced neighboring and jealous gardeners in the
arbutus race, and appeared occasionally with the welcome prize so early
that the Judge accused him of having a private supply in the hothouse.

Some three months after the close of the dynamiting trial, Janeway
was to come to the Harrisons’ for a week-end. Negotiations looking
toward his assuming control of the Durand Corporation legal affairs
had been going forward during the interval. Durand, in particular,
seemed to have taken Janeway up strongly. Janeway had more than once
been a guest of Durand’s at his home, where, despite the domestic
strain and the humiliations put on her by the entertaining of Durand’s
convivial friends, Louise resolutely maintained her position as hostess
until she should leave for good what she had once fondly thought to
be really her own home. Janeway, at these little drinking parties of
Durand’s, conducted himself with reserve, never leading; rather as
one just outside the boisterous fun that characterized some of the
entertainments.

Janeway had not, however, seen Judge Harrison’s country place for
over a year. On the afternoon he arrived from Chicago--a day behind
schedule--Harrison took him out to show him what he had done in the
interval. For one thing, he had built a new house.

The Judge took his guest through bypaths down to the entrance to the
grounds, and, turning to secure an effect, walked him up the formal
avenue leading to the residence. “Elizabeth,” he observed, “thought the
French traditions of this part of the country would justify something
in the château style. It’s too formal, but Elizabeth likes it.”

“Don’t you?”

“As much as I like any new-fangled thing. The truth is, Janeway,
I’m sick to death of fuss and feathers. I’d like to live, like my
grandfather, in a log cabin. When I talk simplicity my friends
laugh at me. But I mean it. I used to think the loss of money a
stupendous calamity. I don’t any more; I’m beginning to regard it with
equanimity--especially if it’s the other fellow loses it. I don’t
fancy a stone house, myself,” he explained in his pseudo deprecatory
fashion--an inoffensive affectation. “The only stone house in Appleton,
where I got my early impressions of life, was the county jail. The
association of ideas has always sort of spoiled a stone house for
me, but Elizabeth got to talking with an architect, and this is the
outcome. It has its compensations, for when the Socialists come in we
lawyers will all be living in stone houses with the sort of Michael
Angelo windows they had on our county jail. And I shall be accustomed
to it.”

He pointed across the wide slough that bore the name of The Skokie, and
cut through one corner of his holdings. “I’ve added that ‘forty’ since
you’ve seen the place,” he went on. “You know all this land--all this
part of the country, in fact--belonged once to my grandfather; that’s
why I wanted it back. I was brought up here. My father had to sell this
place to educate the boys. He took us to Appleton. And that was the end
of my farming.

“But I’m just naturally a farmer, Janeway. I love it. Why, sometimes I
get on a train and run out to my Nebraska ranch just to see them turn
over a new piece of sod----”

“Still got that Nebraska land?”

“Some of it--about ten sections--little over six thousand acres. It
was railroad land, you know, and I got it for a song. You were in the
office when I picked it up; I wanted you to buy some----”

“I never was cut out for a millionaire, Judge, was I?”

“Well, sir, I just enjoy seeing them turn that virgin soil over with
a sod plough. Think of it--soil that never since the creation of the
world has been touched by the hand of man. My grandfather”--Judge
Harrison pointed to the grass under their feet--“did the same thing
right here that I am doing in Nebraska----”

“With this difference,” interposed Janeway, “that your grandfather did
it himself; you’re hiring somebody to do it for you.”

“A generation from now no American will be able to see that done in
his own country,” continued Harrison, unperturbed. “It’s filling up
too fast--too fast. The Russians have overrun that part of the country
where I am, out there--trying all the time to cut roads through me and
all that----”

“Not willing to drive a couple or eight miles around----”

“Janeway,” exclaimed the Judge with conviction, “speaking as an
American--not as a steel maker--I’d like to put up the bars and keep
every blamed emigrant out of this country for the next hundred years.”

Janeway raised his hand as if to say: “Stop right there.” “Judge,” he
said with emphasis, “you’ve told me a great many things in my day.
Now I am going to tell you one: The very day that the stream of our
European emigration stops, that day the tide of our material greatness
turns; that day it touches high-water mark, and from that day it will
steadily and inevitably recede.

“Nothing--not all our fine words, our fine boasting, will avert that
consequence. We owe our nation’s present material greatness to the
fact that it has been fed by a constant stream of European emigrants
to do our work. Americans don’t work any more--don’t you realize that?
We haven’t used our hands for two generations. Whoever is turning
your Nebraska sod, whether Swede, or Slav, or German, you may be sure
it’s neither Leatherstocking nor an Indian brave. The Indian has too
much sense to touch a plough, and Leatherstocking’s “gifts” have been
developed entirely in the direction of getting somebody else to do his
work for him. Poor men from Europe, as able physically as we ever were
and as clean morally, have dug our canals, built our railroads, manned
our factories, worked our mines, and tilled our farms. Shut your gates
as soon as you please--I don’t care anything about that. But when you
do, remember you pay that particular price for doing it.

“Think a minute, Judge. There is one part of our country, and only one,
that has never been fed by that European stream. The penniless emigrant
had no chance to get a job there, because the cotton, tobacco, and corn
were picked by slaves. There was no free land there when our West was
new. So the Irishman and the German, the Swiss and the Scandinavian
went to Illinois and Wisconsin and Iowa and Minnesota. What is the
result? The part of our country which missed that stream is to-day the
poorest part of it materially, and the most pitiful politically--whole
communities, States in fact, given over voluntarily to illiteracy and
steeped in ignorance and bigotry. And yet that part of our country once
held the highest and best of our nation’s traditions----”

“You’re forgetting the Civil War, Janeway----”

“No, I’m not. But if you want to see what Americans left to themselves,
pure and undefiled, have done, look to the mountains of North Carolina
and Tennessee, where moonshine and in-breeding stalk hand in hand. They
don’t get any immigration down there--they don’t want any.”

“Well, shut up, Janeway, anyway, and listen to me. I didn’t bring you
out here to talk to me; I brought you out here to talk to you. Let us
contemplate the restfulness of this landscape and let our shortcomings
momentarily be forgotten.

“When I got hold of this place again Elizabeth asked me to suggest the
best way to ‘treat’ it. I said: ‘Let it alone.’ Then she consulted a
man from Boston and proceeded to ‘landscape’ it. See that old barn,
the other side of the garage? They wanted to scrap that, Janeway. I
said: ‘No! You can spoil the rest of the four hundred and sixty acres
as much as you like--not that. I reserve that for my own.’” He spoke
parenthetically and apologetically. “That barn was on the place when
my father lived here. I can remember the hay-loft, and the cutter up
there in the summer, and the horse and cow stalls down-stairs--and at
one end the chicken yard, you know.

“Well, I’ve got the same thing now. A hay-loft--hay forty dollars a
ton! And the riding-horses and cows down-stairs, and chickens, by
gum!--my own chickens. How many? Eighteen--hens--widows at that.
Elizabeth complained the roosters kept her awake, so we soft-boiled
them. About half the time I feed the hens myself. And I get the eggs
myself. They hide their nests--exactly the way they used to when I was
a boy. Sometimes I stumble on a surprise nestful of eggs; well, sir,
you wouldn’t believe how rich that nest of eggs makes me feel. It’s the
nearest sensation to getting something for nothing I ever experience.
Sometimes I get caught for five or ten thousand dollars at a clip in
Steel. But if I happen next day to find a nest of eggs, painstakingly
hidden away by a thrifty old hen, I feel as prosperous as all-get-out
again.”

Mrs. Harrison joined her husband and her guest. The Judge pointed once
more.

“That’s my vegetable garden over there. The real millionaire,
Janeway--rich or poor, I don’t care whether he’s got money in the
bank or not--is the man who can grow his own vegetables and fruits,
and eat them the day they’re picked. These infernal market-growers
cultivate, not fruits that taste good, but fruits that’ll keep. They’ve
got that market quality down so blamed fine their berries aren’t fit
to eat; they’d keep forever. But I like the green stuff from the
garden. As I get older I grow more like Nebuchadnezzar--my taste runs
to grass--system seems to require it. Now, this is that kind of an
old-fashioned vegetable and fruit garden where I grow things that taste
the way they used to taste.”

“Take care of it yourself?” asked Janeway, looking at the well-kept
plot through the smoke rising from his cigar.

“Oh, I get out into it once in a while,” asserted the Judge, but in the
half-hearted tone of a man knowing that he faces immediate exposure.

His wife burst into a laugh. “Sidney Harrison!” she exclaimed. “What
a story! Don’t you ever believe that, Mr. Janeway. His gardening is a
perfect joke. What he _does_ do every once in a while is to drive up
and down Kinzie Street in Chicago, stop at all the seed stores, and buy
every rake and tool and hoe they show him----”

“Labor-saving devices,” muttered the Judge, feebly defensive.

“--and store them away in that rickety old barn. He won’t even let the
gardeners use them. There they lie, rusting their weary lives away.”

Her husband stood his ground. “The point is, Janeway,” he maintained
firmly, “they _are_ there. The tools are there, the garden’s there, if
I take a notion to hoe something the hoe’s there, and the thing’s there
to be hoed--hm?”

Elizabeth spoke to Janeway in a confidence. “I’m going to have a grand
auction some day.”

“Don’t you touch anything in that barn,” interposed her husband. “A
tramp came along last summer, and Elizabeth, passing all my old shoes,
gave him the only new pair I had in the world.”

“Does he still look to the robins for his spring calendar?” asked
Janeway of Mrs. Harrison.

“He does. But I don’t. I’ve a much better calendar than that. I always
know when spring is near, whether the robins come or not, for when
the days begin to grow the least bit longer Sidney invariably begins
to talk about moving that old barn. He ought to have respect for its
age, but he hasn’t. He moves it every spring, regularly. I call it his
barn de luxe. It must cost him more than the house to keep it going.
I suggested putting the thing on wheels. But every time he moves it,
he sets it down on a stone foundation that would hold up the Masonic
Temple.”

“Ever make tunnels in the hay, Janeway?” asked the Judge, pushing the
conversation along. “If you feel like it to-morrow morning, go to it;
the hay’s there.”

“Why, to-morrow’s Sunday!” exclaimed his wife, simulating a shock.

“Very good. Comb the hay out of his hair, the way my sister used
to comb it out of mine, and send him to Sunday-school,” responded
Harrison, unruffled.

When they got back to the house Gertrude Durand was there with Jim
Kennedy. Kennedy was a young lawyer in Janeway’s Chicago office, a poor
Fond du Lac boy whom Janeway had trained and taken to the city, and
who had recently astonished his home town, enraged Robert Durand, and
amazed his own happy mother by winning the favor of the richest girl in
it, Gertrude Durand. Kennedy and Gertrude stayed to dinner. The talk
turned to steel and to the phenomenal expansion of the Durand business.

“But, Uncle Sidney,” asked Gertrude imperiously, “_when_ are we going
to get another one of those nice extra dividends?”

Judge Harrison pursed his mouth. “By jing, you’ll have to ask Bob
about that. I don’t know any more. I guess labor’s getting the extra
dividends these days.”

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Gertrude, in despair. “And here I’ve made poor
Jim put all his savings into Steel, with the idea that he’d have no end
of extras!”

The Judge looked at Kennedy grimly. “The only consolation Jim will have
is that he’s in the same boat with the rest of the rich men.”

“I arrive always and everywhere too late,” retorted Kennedy. “Now that
I join the ranks of the rich they all get poor.”

“It’s really got so now,” continued the Judge, “that it’s the rich man
who has to hustle to pay his bills. Simms was growling the other day
about the high prices of everything, from butter and eggs to barbers
and hotels; he kicks at the awful hotel tariffs.

“‘What’s happened, Simms,’ I said to him, ‘is that the small fry have
paid us the compliment of imitating us. We began it; we pointed the
way. To-day every producer, whether he sells lumber or prunes or
just plain sand, is in touch with every other producer of lumber or
prunes or sand to “regulate” production and prices. In every territory
manufacturer meets manufacturer, jobber meets jobber, to “regulate”
prices; the meanest retailer combines with the other meanest retailer
to “stabilize” the price of peanuts; it is a hard-and-fast combine
every step of the way from the cradle to the grave. Of course, these
birds all camouflage their real objects. The lumbermen meet as
“What-Nots,” the bartenders as “Eagles,” the hucksters as benefactors
of society. The result is always the same. These conventions of
philanthropists may be entertained by great humorists, enlivened by the
cavorting of short-skirted women, decorated beautifully with flowers.
But it’s like a wake and a funeral--and after the feasting and under
the flowers there lie the remains of that enemy to prosperity and
progress--competition.’

“It reminds me of a book I read recently, ‘The Personal Recollections
of Bill Jones.’ Bill announced in Chapter One that his ambition, from
his earliest years, had been to make the world better for his having
lived in it. This sounded like a fair proposition--one of the fair
kind Janeway would put up to a jury. But when I got through the book
and had digested Bill’s efforts--and they were interesting--I saw they
had indeed been aimed at making the world better; but it was in the
direction, more particularly, of making it better for Bill Jones.”




CHAPTER V

LOUISE ENCOUNTERS JANEWAY


After dinner the two men adjourned to the library. The evening was cool
and a fire burned in the grate. Between Janeway and Judge Harrison
there existed a bond of sympathy that draws men together and holds
them together better than most common traits, namely, a freemasonry of
brains.

They discussed, with the reserved diplomacy in which both were
experienced practitioners, the figures at which Janeway could be
induced to accept the proffered position of general counsel for the
Durand Companies, and the details of the arrangement--and drifted
from the more important topic to the current political situation.
Judge Harrison, as National Republican Committeeman for the State and
a member of the executive board, always kept in touch with national
affairs, because the national policies had a very direct bearing on
the steel business. He liked politics, anyway, and enjoyed the share
of power that fell within his sphere of influence. Janeway himself had
always felt the force of the Judge’s views, and drawn from them many
of his own ideas of American polity. But Janeway wanted now to make,
and did make it very clear that his duties as counsel should include no
political obligations of any sort.

“It is not necessary they should,” said Harrison, quite serene in
his programme. “I shall turn over to you everything except political
responsibility. So far as Republican policies are concerned, I,
myself, shall try to keep track of them; and Simms is very useful
with the powers at Washington; he and Bob are hand-in-glove with
the departments. And nobody pays any attention to Congress lately,
anyway--the cheapest men, in the House especially, that have ever met
in Washington.

“I don’t know whether it’s a sign I’m getting old, Janeway,” continued
Harrison, “but I notice almost every time I come in contact with them
what an inferior set of men, in Congress and out, make our laws. You
see it strikingly, too, at a national political convention. Where are
the equals of the last generation of politicians and lawmakers? Our own
profession is the sole exception, and it is an exception only at the
top.”

“What has happened,” responded Janeway, weighing Harrison’s remark, “is
that business is taking all the American brains that used to supply our
political life. Business is as voracious as the twin daughters of the
horse leech. Our great rewards are not in politics to-day--that’s the
trouble; they are in business. It’s inevitable,” continued Janeway,
“that talent should seek the avenues of greatest reward. When Michael
Angelo wrought and Leonardo painted, the highest honors of their time
and place went to painters and architects and sculptors. Leonardo
nowadays would be an aeronautical engineer, or transforming the snows
of the Sierras into hot-point electric irons for thrifty women to start
disastrous fires with in hotels and apartment-houses.”

“I shouldn’t mind the beggarly politicians so much,” persisted
Harrison, “if the people had held up. When I was a young man and lived
up north we used to ride to Chicago in the day coaches of the train.
There was a parlor-car at the hind end, but it was mostly empty. I
rode among the people, because my business came from them; so did Matt
Carpenter, our United States Senator. More than one wintry morning I’ve
seen Tim Howe, Postmaster-General of the United States, after getting
out at Green Bay for the six-o’clock morning train, curled up on the
last seat of a day coach, next to the Baker heater, in his ulster, for
an after-daylight nap. It was a thousand times more interesting to sit
out in the day coach and talk to the people than it was to isolate
yourself in the parlor-car.

“I used to ride--I have ridden--everywhere on the train except on the
cow catcher--and enjoyed it. I’ve talked with the engineer in the
cab--and he was always a stalwart American. In the baggage-car I’ve
watched an old, gray-bearded express messenger surreptitiously open a
barrel of black bass, put on at Oshkosh for South Water Street, filch
one out of the ice for his Sunday dinner, nail up the barrel again--and
called him an honest man; I’d have trusted him with every dollar I had
in the world. He knew the fish were netted outside of the law, and took
his private toll out of them on the way to market. We didn’t think it
a serious malfeasance--and I was the railroad attorney myself at that
time.

“To-day I ride to the city in a train of parlor-cars; I talk to no
one, unless it is to some millionaire who takes not a blamed bit
more interest in me than I do in him. If I have to take a train of
day coaches, I’m shocked at the people that ride in them--ignorant
of everything, impossible to talk to--Huns, Polacks, Greeks, Letts,
dagoes--specimens of every savage tribe of Europe and Jews from every
conceivable European haunt of the ten tribes. I’ve encountered in those
day coaches Spanish Jews from Constantinople, Syrian peddlers from
Lebanon, wild men from every jungle in the Balkans--but fewer and fewer
of our old-fashioned Americans. Where are they? What’s become of our
ancestors? We’ve run the population up to one hundred and ten millions.
But--the quality! Janeway,” demanded Harrison sternly, “have you faith,
in the face of it all, and with such mongrel crews as we gather in
Washington, in the stability of our political institutions?”

“Faith in them as the best yet devised by man.”

“That’s no answer.”

“I have hope in them.”

“In the ability of people to govern themselves?”

“Better than anybody else can or will govern them.”

Harrison shook his head. “They’re not making much of a job of it
to-day,” he growled.

“They’re not governing themselves to-day. They’re being governed by a
minority of one.”

“What’s the remedy?”

“Pare the presidential patronage claws.”

“There’s too much liberty, anyway.”

“Not enough, Judge. When abuses in popular government arise, the remedy
should always be the same; instead of restricting the power of the
people, add to it; I’m for the referendum.”

“Mob law!” said the Judge grimly, but without releasing his cigar from
between his teeth.

Janeway was at no loss for a retort. “Our mob is a pretty good one yet.”

They heard voices in the hall. A tapping on the open door of the room
interrupted the conversation, and Gertrude Durand, with Kennedy, walked
in on them.

“What wickedness are you two plotting in this darkened room?” demanded
Gertrude, as she stopped at her uncle’s chair and threw her arm about
his neck.

“Why, mostly trying to save the country,” exclaimed Janeway, looking
with approval on Gertrude’s shining dark eyes. “Hello, Jim.”

“That’s what everybody’s doing,” complained Kennedy, in the dry tone
that profitably characterized his speech in court and out, “except
me. I’m only trying to save my salary--and making a poor job of that.
Judge,” he continued, “they sustained your demurrer to-day in the
Telephone Case. Simms had a message.”

Harrison, pleased, gave only indirect evidence of it. “You two didn’t
come out here to tell me that,” he said, eying the couple with
approving distrust.

“No,” confessed Gertrude, “I came out to coax my adorable auntie to
come to my house, without fail, Tuesday afternoon. The women are to
meet to talk over the Children’s Hospital bazaar.”

“It will take exactly one thousand bazaars to get that Children’s
Hospital going, Gertrude,” prophesied Harrison, in sceptical mood.

“Now don’t you be pessimistic, Uncle Sidney,” said Gertrude
reprovingly. “We are _going_ to get it going. And we should be
delighted to have you and Mr. Janeway----”

“But greatly surprised,” suggested Janeway, “if we appeared.”

Gertrude had a rejoinder ready. “Bishop Marion is going to be there.”

“No credit to him,” returned Janeway. “He _has_ to be.”

“I hope you two are not out without a chaperon,” said the Judge.

Gertrude laughed. “For a wonder, we’re not. Louise came over to help us
coax.”

Harrison pricked up his ears. “Louise? Where is she?”

“Down-stairs with Auntie.”

“We’ll go down,” said her uncle. “Two pretty women here at once demand
our best attention.”

After the discussion of the hospital benefit--a set charity idea of
Gertrude’s and an annual fixture--had subsided, Janeway walked over to
where Louise was talking with her aunt.

“I was coming over to-night,” he said to her, when Mrs. Harrison left
them, “to call on you and Mr. Durand, but Judge Harrison got me into
the library and I couldn’t--or wouldn’t--shake loose from him.”

“You’d have missed Robert,” responded Louise. “He’s in Chicago
to-night.”

“But I’m coming very soon,” continued Janeway.

“We shall be glad to see you any time; and I hope before I go away.”

“You are going away?”

“To Italy.”

He looked at her very deliberately and with unconcealed surprise. They
were standing now. Janeway asked her to sit down, and, drawing a chair,
sat before her. “You’re not afraid of the submarines?”

She said not. He gazed at her reprovingly. “You ought to be,” he
remarked at length.

“I’m not,” she insisted, but without any attempt to convert him to
views of her own.

He continued to regard her with surprise, but his eyes were not
unsympathetic.

“You’ll think better of that,” he predicted. “Your husband will hardly
let you expose yourself in that way.” He used a tentative tone, but
since he did not put the remark in the form of a question, Louise
avoided an answer. “Uncle Sidney,” she said, instead, “told us you,
yourself, were very nearly a passenger on the _Lusitania_.”

“I cancelled passage the day before it sailed--fortunately.”

“Was it the warnings?”

He almost ignored the implication. “I’m sure I should have cut a poor
figure swimming in Irish waters at any season of the year. But men
charged with business matters have less choice in their movements than
women of leisure.”

Louise shrugged her shoulders slightly. “Doesn’t everything depend on
what we consider our responsibilities and our situations?”

The question failed to draw him out. “How long are you to be gone?” he
asked.

“That doesn’t even remotely answer my question, does it?” she objected.

“About situations, responsibilities, no. The reason I didn’t respond
is because I hope you haven’t any exaggerated ideas about being needed
over there--wild ideas on that point prevail so now among American
women--and men, too, for that matter. But you don’t impress me as
being of the hysterical type that nourish delusions or fall for silly
propaganda.” He spoke with little of tactful or gentle endeavor to
win her to his views--rather, his tone and manner, like his words,
were blunt. Only a blend of honest concern for her welfare redeemed
them from unpleasantness. “They seem to think they are called on
personally,” he continued, “to get into the limelight and save the
world; Atlas himself had nothing on their conception of their job.”

“I’m as innocent as a baby of anything like that,” protested Louise.
“My trip is purely a personal desire for a change.”

His eyebrows rose. “Great heavens!” he exclaimed. “For a change!”

She saw her mistake and flushed. “Oh, I shouldn’t say that, should I?
No matter!” There was impatience in her tone. “Call it a whim, anything
you like--I’m just going.”

“Then I have the less hesitation,” he returned gravely, “in trying to
dissuade you from going. If you were a mere female with a mission I
should keep still; that kind ought to go--Europe just now is the place
for them. But _not_ for those who would be a loss to--” He was suddenly
conscious of a sensation of floundering.

It did not escape Louise. She smiled in revenge. “To whom?” she asked
coolly.

“To those to whom they are dear,” he returned collectedly.

“Or ought to be,” she suggested, with a sceptical laugh. Yet the
quality of her laugh was not unpleasant. They were looking directly
into each other’s eyes, and their exchanges were animated. “I hope,” he
returned, “you wouldn’t expect _me_ to approve such a qualification.
And I renew my own question--how long are you going to be gone?”

“Indefinitely.”

“Jingo!” He paused for a minute. “And no protests will change your
determination?”

“You are the first to utter any.”

“The first?”

Both the tone and the manner of his question warned her. “Well, it so
happens you are my first confidant,” she rejoined.

“Oh, I see. You’re really not going at all, then.”

“But I am.”

“Your husband will never let you.”

She only rose to her feet as if the discussion were profitless,
laughing again--not significantly or covertly, just naturally, at his
seriousness. But her laugh again fell pleasingly on Janeway’s ears.

He was reluctant to give up. “I’ll lay a wager you don’t go,” he
exclaimed, rising in turn, and refusing to be dismissed.

Louise, smiling reservedly, paused. “What shall it be?”

“Whatever you like,” he answered, betrayed into something like
eagerness.

She hesitated just long enough to dismiss him. “Whatever it might be, I
couldn’t honestly take it--for,” she declared, with deliberate emphasis
and meeting his eyes unafraid, “I’m going.”




CHAPTER VI

THE BISHOP’S STORY


Sunday morning Judge Harrison and Janeway played golf at the Country
Club.

“Mrs. Durand tells me she is going to Italy,” said Janeway, while the
two men, sitting on a bench, were waiting at a tee.

Judge Harrison, watching with contemplative interest the teeing of a
ball by a player ahead, made no comment on the remark. “Why any sane
woman,” continued Janeway, in the absence of response, “should want to
get into that mess, I can’t imagine. Has she said anything to you about
it?” he asked, when there was still no comment.

Grizzled and thin in his jersey, the Judge spoke with reluctance, but
as if of something that had to be faced. “She told me last night. I’m
sorry, of course,” he went on. “I said what I could to dissuade her;
guess it’s no use. Louise is sane enough, as far as that goes; she’s
too sane--that’s part of the difficulty. The fact simply is, Bob is a
pretty free-liver. I don’t pry into his affairs, but I guess he usually
has some woman on the string. Louise isn’t used to that kind of thing;
it doesn’t set well with her. Just recently I understand it’s a woman
that used to live here, named Montgomery. I imagine the reason Louise
is going away is because she and Bob have agreed to disagree.

“No use,” continued the Judge. “When things get that bad, if a woman’s
sensitive and high-strung, it’s better to quit. Your honor, Janeway.
What did I make this hole in before?”

So many things were to be discussed by the two men concerning the legal
affairs of which Janeway was to take hold for the Durand Companies,
that Janeway spent most of the week at Eagles Nest. Tuesday afternoon
the Judge and he played golf again. On their way home they drove around
by Gertrude Durand’s, to pick up Mrs. Harrison.

Gertrude lived in the old Durand home. The house had been built by her
father when he went to Fond du Lac to live; it represented a period in
the progressive story of Fond du Lac architecture when towers were the
distinctive feature of the few so-called rich men’s houses. A tower in
the design of a pretentious Fond du Lac residence was as inevitable
as a steeple on a Fond du Lac church, and the Durand tower, being the
aggressive expression of the biggest man to come to town during the
tower obsession, was a little worse than its earlier and less elaborate
neighbors.

But the house was comfortable. The high ceilings were a difficulty and
the extravagant panelling was an eyesore, but Gertrude was, first of
all, loyal to the old home. She had time and taste and ample means, and
spent all three earnestly in successive campaigns of what her Uncle
Sidney termed “remuddeling” her father’s house.

The golfers, entering Gertrude’s living-room, found the bazaar meeting
ended and tea being served to the committee, which included, among
others, Louise and Bishop Marion, who seemed, not very successfully,
trying to make his escape when Harrison and Janeway arrived. Heartened
by the coming of two more men, the Bishop took fresh courage and fell
to talking with Judge Harrison. Janeway sat down by Mrs. Harrison.

“You remember Bishop Marion, of course,” said Mrs. Harrison to Janeway.

“Very well,” returned Janeway, “though I haven’t seen him for some
time. When he came to Fond du Lac I was living here.”

“We are all fond of his sister. She keeps house for him, you know,”
continued Mrs. Harrison. “They are from the East, I believe.”

“No, the South,” said Janeway. “He was sent to this part of the
country originally for his health. He’s not really rugged yet, but it
seems to have built him up. He comes from South Carolinian stock, the
Legarés--the ‘fighting Legarés’; there was a considerable Huguenot
element, he has told me, in South Carolina.”

“From the fighting Legarés!” exclaimed Mrs. Harrison. “Then he has
degenerated, for he’s the mildest-mannered man in the world.”

“Don’t be deceived,” observed Janeway. “The fighting qualities may be
under discipline, but they’re there. He made a good client.”

Mrs. Harrison asked questions about the Legarés. Janeway gave her what
he could, even to speculating as to whether Mrs. Stowe took her name
for Simon Legree from the famous Carolinian family. But Janeway had
more than the Legarés on his mind, and when he could, got nearer to
Louise.

She stood at that moment talking on the edge of the circle to which
Janeway had been introduced. The lines of her figure profited by
the simplicity of a tailored costume and a turban heightened by an
aigrette, and she stood so erect that even her head and shoulders added
to the impression of decision conveyed by her eyes. It was only as she
sat down, at his request, that Janeway noticed how well her slender
ankles matched her well-shaped feet.

“I see you are going,” he remarked abruptly and no more loudly than
necessary, but in a tone intimating reproach.

She looked at him in mild surprise. “What do you mean? How can you
‘see’?” she demanded.

“It’s written,” he responded, with leisurely confidence. “You look trim
as a baby battleship already.”

“I don’t know what a ‘baby battleship’ looks like,” she smiled, “but
I wish I felt like some sort of a fighting craft. I’ve been having a
touch of what you men call ‘cold feet’ about venturing abroad. But I’m
going.”

“I was sure you were,” he declared, in amiable banter; “no one ever
takes my advice.”

“Oh!” she protested, lifting her eyebrows as she looked at him. “How
can that be? I hear that many people _seek_ your advice.”

“Not quite the same thing, but no matter; I want to inflict at least a
suggestion on you.”

“That’s very kind.”

“But may I?”

“I’m in a mood to listen to anything. Of course, you mustn’t tell me I
can’t go.”

“It’s the submarines, and I’ve been wanting to tell you----”

“Thinking of my danger?”

“Of you and your danger,” he retorted. “But on your part you mustn’t
make fun of me. There is a line of French steamers running from New
York to the Mediterranean; I don’t know the name of it at the moment,
but I can get it for you. You are going to Italy--take that line. Those
steamers are not molested by submarines.”

“How extraordinary!” she exclaimed, with wide-open eyes. “How can
_that_ be?”

“It is the line of travel to and from Rome, kept open for those whose
necessities take them to and from the Vatican. I imagine the Germans
dare not sink those boats--or do not; they have rows enough on their
hands as it is.”

Louise drew a long breath. “Well,” she said, with relief, “that should
prove a very valuable suggestion. Will you really let me know about it?”

He was ready to continue the conversation, but she turned to ask an
irrelevant question of Gertrude. Gertrude was talking with the Bishop,
and now took occasion to tell Janeway that Bishop Marion had spoken
that afternoon before the Woman’s Club.

“What did you talk to the women about?” asked Janeway of the Bishop.

“He gave us a perfectly wonderful talk,” declared Gertrude.

“I don’t know how palatable it was,” said the Bishop, “but the ladies
were kind enough to receive it politely. I ventured to call attention
to what I conceive to be the debt woman owes to Christianity; I
reminded them of a few of her tribulations before our Christian era,
and of some of the things Christianity has done to relieve her of them
and to elevate her in her relation to men; how our Divine Lord, in
choosing the Blessed Virgin for His mother, had set up a new type of
womanhood and motherhood. And how innocently ungrateful it seemed to me
for women nowadays--enjoying the privileges and liberties Christianity
has brought them--to march up and down the land abusing Christianity,
which they do in the most irresponsible manner possible. I referred
to what Christianity had done to keep our women from living in Moslem
harems. I recalled how a saint and a pope, aided only by Venice and
Spain, with France and England very deaf to his appeals, had organized
the defense of Europe at a time when the Turk was well on his road to
overwhelm it. I spoke of the battle of Lepanto----”

“New ‘stuff’ for a woman’s club,” suggested Harrison.

“But I brought it up to date,” continued the Bishop, apologetically,
“by linking it with Chesterton’s poem, and I only instanced that the
Gulf of Lepanto was the point at which was once decided the question
as to whether Europe should be Christian or Moslem; and ventured to
add,” he continued, with delicate emphasis, “that east of Lepanto there
still are no women’s clubs.”

“But, Bishop,” exclaimed Gertrude, “I can’t imagine who inflicted that
awful woman on us to talk on divorce after you, or, rather, at you.”

“It was only that she wanted very much to bring me to her way of
thinking,” suggested the Bishop composedly.

“Why, she positively ranted,” said Louise.

“I didn’t mind that much,” said Bishop Marion, “but I confess I’m
always sorry to hear a woman defending the divorce and remarriage evils
of to-day. It isn’t that it’s so revolting; but it always seems to me,
when I think of what Christ has done for woman, like biting the hand
that feeds you. Of course, they do it without realizing what they do.”

Judge Harrison spoke from his corner. “The only objection I have to
this divorce business is that it throws too many cold-storage women on
the market. I’ve got a client now with two daughters--fine girls. He
claims he can’t get ’em married; the second-hand females grab off the
boys.”

“Don’t be too hard on the poor women, Judge,” rejoined the Bishop.
“They are the prime sufferers through divorce. Humanly speaking, I
sometimes feel I might be reconciled to irresponsible divorce and
equally irresponsible remarriage, if woman could be benefited by
it. I think my own Lawgiver had it in mind that they could not, when
he restricted men in this regard. He saw what any intelligent man
may now see, that woman is the victim and man the sorry profiteer by
the divorce court. Small wonder that after being preyed upon these
unfortunates turn again to prey on men.”

Louise listened intently.

“Bishop, you’re too soft-hearted,” interposed Mrs. Harrison. “You
haven’t had enough experience with women.” While Bishop Marion looked
in subdued humor at Mrs. Harrison, Judge Harrison spoke again.

“Janeway ought to be able to give us points on this,” said he. “Have
you found divorcées troublesome, Janeway?”

“I agree with Bishop Marion whenever I can,” remarked Janeway
diplomatically. “I certainly agree with him,” he added, with
characteristic emphasis, “that woman is the divorce victim in the great
run of cases. Woman is naturally more decent than man. There are a few
innocent women that profit by release from a brute; there are also
female vampires that profit by divorce, because it extends the scope
of their operations; the divorce court is to them what a bank is to
a business man. These creatures get their line of credit--such as it
is--from our divorce courts, and transact their business of ‘vamping’
under legal auspices.

“But excluding these two classes and coming to the great majority of
cases, divorce is now only a legalized means of wife desertion, and
our unfortunate girls are its victims.

“Our poor boys are in just as bad a way,” objected Harrison. “This
client with the daughters is a railroad executive. He has a son also.
‘If I send him to college,’ he says to me, ‘a lot of half-baked
professors--gas-bags that couldn’t earn an honest living outside of
an endowed institution--will make a Socialist of him. There’s no use
trying to make a business man of him; business to-day, if it’s anything
more than running a peanut stand, is discreditable. An American
business man, if his turnover reaches a million, is looked on as a
thief.’”

“You know, Bishop,” interposed Gertrude, “I’m just a hot-blooded little
pagan, but I really did appreciate every word you said. And he had a
most wonderful woman there with him and his sister, as a guest,” she
continued, speaking with characteristic energy to Janeway. “I wish you
could have met her. By the way,” she added, looking accusingly at the
Bishop, “you said she had a story, and you promised to tell it.”

“You mean Miss Virginia Hampton? Her story _is_ unusual,” said the
Bishop.

“At the beginning of the French Revolution,” he continued, “a French
noblewoman, the Countess de Large, found herself stranded in the
Netherlands. Europe was seething over the outbreak in France, and
the Countess conceived it to be her duty to rejoin her sovereigns in
Paris. She had been a favorite at the French court, and the Princess
de Lamballe, companion of Marie Antoinette, had been godmother to
her daughter and only child, a little girl of six. By the time the
Countess reached Paris, the flames had so spread that she found she
would be very fortunate if she could get out of France with her head
on her shoulders. After much hardship and difficulty and by bribing
the mistress of Talleyrand with a necklace worth a king’s ransom, the
Countess got a permit to leave France. Accompanied by a faithful maid
and her little girl, she made her way in constant peril to Marseilles;
there she arranged for passage on a ship to North America.

“The flight across the harbor to the ship had to be made at night. In
the darkness and confusion, among other escaping refugees, a tragedy
occurred: the maid and the little girl, put into one boat, were taken
to the ship for Boston. The Countess, in another boat, was put aboard a
French ship bound for the Brazils.

“This French ship, on its way to South America, was captured by a
Spanish cruiser--Spain being then at war with France. The Countess, as
a passenger and an emigrée of distinction, was treated with the utmost
consideration, and placed by the Spanish court in the care of the
Countess of Montijo, mother, by the way, of the ex-Empress Eugénie.

“The Countess de Large, overwhelmed by the loss of her child, remained
for years with her protectors in Spain. The maid in charge of the
little girl reached Boston, but without being able to speak one word of
English or knowing a soul in the whole of North America. She proved,
however, a remarkably resourceful maid, and turning to a trade she had
learned in her youth, she opened a millinery shop; with her earnings
she thus provided for her young charge and herself. When the little
one reached school age, the maid-milliner sent her to the best private
school in Boston, where one of her school-mates was Theodosia, daughter
of Aaron Burr.

“Meantime things were happening in France. Ten years had elapsed and
Napoleon was firmly in the saddle. Wishing to add lustre to his rather
miscellaneous court, he invited the exiles of the French nobility to
return to France, and the Countess de Large, aged by her troubles,
returned to Paris. The alert little Boston milliner got wind of what
was doing, and, converting her resources, made arrangements to return
with her charge, now a girl of sixteen, to France. So effective was
her diplomacy that she got the little girl and herself under the
wing of the Minister we were then sending to the French court--John
Jay. Minister Jay numbered in his diplomatic suite a young man from
Charleston, South Carolina, son of a distinguished Revolutionary
general, after whom Fort Sumter was named. You remember, Judge, we
had two able men in South Carolina in Revolutionary times--Marion,
the Swamp Fox, taking his nickname from the theatre of his operations
along the coast--and not an ancestor of mine, by the way--and Sumter,
operating in the hills. Sumter was known as the Game Cock.

“On the voyage young Sumter fell violently in love with the youthful
aristocrat, but her chaperon held him sternly aloof. On reaching Paris,
to the joy of all concerned, the Countess de Large and her daughter
were reunited. Young Sumter pressed his suit. There were differences
in religion to be considered, but these were not prohibitive. It was,
however, a matter of the gravest concern to the Countess de Large
to ascertain just who the Sumters were in South Carolina. Some of
the French letters making these inquiries are in the hands of her
descendants in Charleston to-day. The two were married.

“Sumter, advancing in the diplomatic service, was in time sent as our
Minister to Brazil. There a daughter was born to the Sumters; she was
named Brazilia Sumter. Brazilia, in due time, married a gentleman of
a Carolinian family, to whom she bore a number of daughters. These
children came along during and after the time that our Civil War had
laid waste to the South. The family, as all our families, was reduced
to new and disastrous straits. But, like brave Southern women, three
of these sisters set about to earn their living and take a place in
the new world about them. They started a girls’ school in Washington
and made a complete success of their undertaking. The youngest sister,
now retiring, having saved up from her years of hard work and devotion
to the training of American gentlewomen, a little capital, now plans
to take it to the relief of her distressed French relatives--whom
none of the American branch now living has ever seen--and to give
herself--literally--for she will undertake the hardest kind of
nursing and, I fear, never come back--to the cause of France. This is
Miss Virginia Hampton, whom you saw with my sister this afternoon,”
explained the Bishop to Gertrude. “They would both have been here
with me, but for passport exigencies that took them to Chicago on the
five-o’clock train.”

“What a splendid woman,” murmured Louise intensely.

“And going to brave the submarines!” exclaimed Gertrude.

“She will accompany me and my sister on my _ad limina_ visit to Rome.
And from Italy we can get her into France.”

Of all the listeners in the Bishop’s circle Louise seemed most
absorbed. The party was breaking up. Conversation became general, but
Louise sought the side of the Bishop and kept close to him. Leaving,
she managed to engage him for a moment apart. “You are going to Italy,
Bishop Marion?”

“In about a fortnight, Mrs. Durand.”

“You are taking your sister and a friend?”

“Yes.”

“Bishop Marion, I want to ask a very great favor--may I, too, go with
you?”

He mastered his complete surprise with another question. “You are not
serious?”

“Quite serious, Bishop Marion.”

“You don’t really mean you are going to Italy?”

“I certainly am.”

“But your passport? You know they are impossible to get, either to
France or Italy, except under the gravest showing, and then only after
interminable delays.”

She faced him quite collectedly and with the utmost determination
reflected in her bearing. “Mr. Simms is attending to that. He gets
anything we need from Washington,” she smiled. “And just now, when I
heard you say you and your sister and Miss Hampton were going! I can’t
tell you,” she exclaimed, “how I felt. It just seemed like a special
Providence!” He perceived the restraint she spoke under--he saw how
deeply she was moved; it was written all over her manner. “‘What an
opportunity,’ I said to myself!” She spoke rapidly on. “If I may go
with you--I mean, provided, of course, it would be agreeable to the
ladies, after you have talked with them--it will be the greatest
kindness you could possibly do me.”

“Indeed,” declared the Bishop, recovering from his astonishment, “I
shall be greatly pleased to have you join our party. And I think I can
safely speak for my sister and our guest. I will let you hear from
me to-morrow. But your passage,” he asked, in perplexity. “Can you
possibly secure it now?”

No difficulty gave her any pause. “I will manage all that--somehow--if
only I may go.”




CHAPTER VII

ENTER MAYMIE


Mrs. Maymie Montgomery had but one grudge against fortune: she had been
born in a small town and of people in extremely moderate circumstances.
To her credit, however, it should be added, in passing, that once
embarked on her career she made every effort to overcome these twin
disadvantages. Her father had been a local sign-painter, and this,
in Fond du Lac, at least, did not spell affluence. As to her own
endowments, Maymie had no disposition to rail at fate; regardless
of how others viewed them, Maymie was both contented and defiant.
She was possessed of that sort of intelligence which, tinctured with
cunning, passes at times for sagacity, and in the mild phrase of her
mild father, whose quiet habit of chewing tobacco contributed to his
taciturnity, Maymie was “a smart girl.”

Proving, even from babyhood, a good camera subject, Maymie had been
assiduously and effectively photographed; and her father had taught her
the art of posing. At seventeen, Maymie, by sheer force of moderately
good looks and an aptitude for tasteful dressing on a slender outlay,
had fought for and established for herself a social place in Fond
du Lac. She secured perhaps more than her share of attention from
the young men, and was thoroughly disliked by the girls. In these
circumstances, urged by a growing ambition, Maymie decided it time to
wake up what she esteemed slow Fond du Lac society. At a church fair
she consented to pose in a series of tableaux in the Greek--whatever
that may mean.

But whatever it might have meant, worthy women present, of the
congregation, thought they knew perfectly well what it did mean, and
raised a riot then and there. One tableau was enough--for the women, at
least; Maymie woke up, not alone the spectators but the whole town. The
church was split. Everybody took sides. While the excitement was at its
height, Maymie announced her engagement to a sympathetic admirer--one
of those that thought the church prudes too hard on Maymie’s art.
And at eighteen her marriage to this rising young dry-goods merchant
of Fond du Lac, Jerry Montgomery, followed as a matter of course. It
might have been successful, except that it unluckily gratified Maymie’s
paramount ambition, an ambition to see something of Chicago. Her
husband, an exception--and in this case an unfortunate exception--to
most country merchants, took his wife to Chicago sometimes on his
buying trips. This familiarized his wife with the attractions of the
city and with his business friends.

At twenty, Maymie was already done with Fond du Lac and small-town
married life; the taste of the city’s opportunities was like the scent
of blood to an awakened tigress. Her first shock, after getting her
divorce, came when she found that the travelling man on whom she had
reckoned as an anchor to windward was a married man. Not alone that,
but he had a wife in no wise minded to divide the husband’s salary or
surrender him to a divorcée. In point of fact, she scared the life out
of Maymie, as Judge Harrison once expressed it to Janeway--and was the
only woman, or man, he added, as far as he knew, that ever did.

Maymie, undaunted by this reverse, found work in a North Side
photographic establishment in Chicago, where both portrait work and
unusual art studies were turned out. She left this place before, not
after, the postal authorities had begun unwelcome inquiries into
its chief source of revenue. But this was, after all, the game of
pikers, and the clever woman landed a job--to quote Harrison again--as
assistant manager and saleswoman in a high-class and reputable Michigan
Avenue art store.

She was almost particularly fortunate in selling high-priced pictures
to well-to-do men with a taste for art. And though she was not able to
hold a customer very long, she made hay rapidly and always left, if I
may once more quote Harrison, a memorable dent in a man’s pocketbook.

By the time she had been made manager and changed the name of the store
to the Michigan Avenue Art Galleries the proprietor’s wife had divorced
him, but this was the merest sort of a fleeting episode in Maymie’s
life. She by this time knew precisely what she wanted; she wanted,
like many a wise and energetic merchant, to retire from business before
getting old--in time to enjoy some of the good things of life. And
when, one day, Robert Durand happened into the galleries, she decided
that he would do to retire on.

It was in that store that Durand first met and talked art with
Maymie. The subject seemed large to be covered in a single interview;
subsequent visits to the galleries only confirmed Durand’s impression
that a topic elevated and engrossing needed for profitable deliberation
an atmosphere somewhat more removed from the commercial tang of a place
in which pictures were sold.

Slow progress was made by Durand in this direction, however, since for
him the astute saleswoman dealt only in rigidly scrupulous art. On
the other hand, Durand, an experienced swordsman, held well on to his
pocketbook; he did not part recklessly with ten-thousand-dollar checks;
in fact, he did not part with them at all. Nor did Maymie part with her
scruples. And this situation, paradoxically enough, stimulated both
sides to fresh dispositions for the contest.

At length, by a happy chance, and to show Maymie how sincere he was in
visiting the galleries purely as an interested amateur, Durand one day
took Simms and Mrs. Simms into the place to look at a picture, while
he looked at the difficult feminine manager. To their mutual surprise,
Mrs. Montgomery and Mrs. Simms found in each other girlhood Fond
du Lac friends. Congratulations and renewed introductions afforded
pleasure to all. A luncheon was not hard for the two ladies to arrange,
and this was followed by a week-end party at the Wheaton farmhouse of
a sister of Mrs. Simms--a farmhouse where congenial, if sophisticated,
friends sometimes met, and where Durand thereafter sometimes drove when
too busy to get home to Fond du Lac. In the weeks following, art topics
were occasionally taken up with the Simmses and with Durand at Wheaton,
where a spice of amateur midnight cookery and Durand’s travelling
cellaret added zest to the parties. And with the ice thus cracked, if
not broken, subjects of mutual interest were discussed later under the
subdued light of golf-club candles, where quiet contributed to a calmer
judgment on mooted topics.

Maymie was nothing if not fastidious, being at times grieved over
neglected opportunities; it seemed now so easy. But under the spell
of kindly advice in her business affairs from a highly successful
exemplar of big business itself, further study of art for art’s sake
was definitely transferred from the galleries to the _laissez-courre_
atmosphere of Michigan Avenue club and hotel supper life--the Simmses
serving as a buffer to overcome Maymie’s instinctive timidity in
familiarizing herself with these new surroundings--surroundings often
eagerly talked of by her, frequently enviously heard of, but never
before by her actually achieved.

Only one cruel uncertainty remained for her in the situation, and it
had not seemed wise on this subject to consult the oracle earlier.
However, in the seclusion of a private dining-room not too far removed
from the Art Institute, she one night summoned courage, the Simmses
being present, to ask Durand a dreaded question. The evening was a sort
of epochal occasion, for Maymie had promised to pose that night in the
Greek for her dear friends, and expectations ran high. But despite the
fact that she had brought her costume along in her hand-bag, she seemed
not precisely in the vein.

And oddly enough--it would appear to one not versed in feminine
strategy--she now chose the moment before retiring to dress for the
tableau to put her long-deferred question. All the evening she had been
distrait. Wine, usually so subtle in relieving her moods of depression,
was this night of no avail. She drank generously, but her sadness
persisted, and at length she looked courageously at Durand across the
disordered table, and asked him point-blank whether he was a married
man; and Durand told her point-blank that he was a married man, and
point-blank added that she knew ---- well he was a married man.

The Simmses defined what followed as a scene. It _was_ a scene. Maymie
had not only flung her gauntlet at the head of the young steel king,
but he had volleyed it rudely back into her face.

Neither was a tyro at the game they were playing. Maymie perceived
that the situation called for a display of force, and she supplied it
with a vengeance; even Durand was taken aback. Reproaches led to the
recriminations quite conventional in such circumstances. Maymie, in a
burst of tears, declared her settled horror of all married men, and
essayed, albeit not too harshly, to reproach Mrs. Simms, thus leading
to a few tart exchanges between devoted friends, but closing with an
affectionate exoneration of Mrs. Simms by Maymie, now the front and
picture of unprotected distress.

This opened the way for Mrs. Simms to essay oil on the troubled waters,
though naturally rather vainly. However, at all costs, a public
disturbance was to be avoided; this was Simms’s business. In the curt
but useful phrase, he read the riot act impartially to both contestants
for the mastery. He skilfully divided his abuse, and afterward gave way
to personal indignation--just enough to dominate the noise--at being
mixed with his wife in such a scene. However, the affair was a real
bout for points; and Mrs. Simms was compelled to act as nurse, and
Simms, much to his disgust, as stretcher-bearer.

The evening ended in a draw, both parties retreating to previously
prepared positions. Fresh libations were poured before the altar of
platonic friendship. But Maymie did not pose.

For the brave little woman some anxious days followed. Would Durand
come back? He would not; and did not. Would the telephone ring, while
she hastened to it and the now familiar dialogue follow: “Is this the
Michigan Avenue Art Galleries? Mrs. Montgomery? One moment, please.
Mr. Durand is on the wire.” For the next few days, while the telephone
often rang, it never brought those welcome words; Durand did not call
up. But when, after a fortnight of “standing pat” all around, the art
telephone did ring, and Mrs. Simms, after tender greetings, invited
Maymie to her sister’s Wheaton farm for the week-end, not hope, but
certainty, filled Maymie’s breast. She knew beyond a reasonable doubt
that Durand would drop in at the suburban home--as he did.

Far from any unpleasant recollection of the scene at the club, no
one apologized, no one was angry. No one’s feelings had been hurt,
because no one had any to hurt; it was only to shuffle the cards and
deal again. A proper degree on Maymie’s part of resentment, tempered
by reserve, at the now unfortunate situation in which she found
herself--of getting mixed up with a married man--a situation that it
seemed nobody could remedy--was natural and was conceded. It was too
late to ask who was to blame. Certainly, she felt, not Maymie. The
dread of breaking up a home, she confided to Mrs. Simms, had been her
guiding star in resolutely keeping aloof, unprotected as she was, from
married men. Mrs. Simms was consolatory, because she sneezed when
Durand took snuff. And this fancy of Durand’s for Maymie’s company,
she in turn assured Maymie, was only a whim and meant no harm--the
little parties were only a distraction from the cares of business.
This well-meant suggestion--parenthetically--went the wrong way with
Maymie, for she had, since it was inevitable, no idea of letting it go
at a whim. But she declared herself interested to learn that Durand’s
craving for diversion was due not only to too close attention to
business, but likewise to an unbalanced ration.

Durand felt that a complete reconciliation could best be achieved
by another supper in town, from which the Simmses, as a possible
disturbing factor, might be eliminated. Although this was at first
a shock to Maymie, she felt, in the end, that it might be better to
leave them out; indeed, she could hardly now face Mrs. Simms at a
private supper with a married man; Durand had involved Maymie in a
trying situation in ever getting married at all before he met her; but
as evidence of penitence on his part, on the day before the supper, a
set of sables arrived at Mrs. Montgomery’s apartment, and the untoward
incident of his marriage was regarded as atoned for.

The supper, as it progressed, established at least a declaration of
devotion on Durand’s part, and of aims on Maymie’s part. She proclaimed
her intentions honorable and marriage her cherished goal--not marriage
to a rich man or a famous man, but just to a man who would give her
the tender, true comradeship she had long but ineffectively sought.
Durand was pushed into more promises than he had intended to make, but
under pressure made them, for Maymie could and did talk plainly to him
of his wicked behavior, only confessing, unsteadily, her own miserable
weakness in not being able to resist listening now, after having grown
too deeply attached to him before the awful truth had been made known.

She then gave herself up to gaiety and kept Durand in a merry mood.
When she stepped with him into the closed car waiting for them at the
street curb, her spirits receded again. Durand was sensible of the
change.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded. “You don’t act very crazy about this
car.” He had just told her the car and the man that drove it were hers.

Maymie made no answer. She only looked seriously ahead, into the
blinding headlights that streamed down Michigan Avenue.

“Is it the car or your furs that don’t suit you?” asked Durand, his
heavy voice cracking a little in reaching unsuccessfully for a note of
tenderness.

Maymie, sinking into the cushions, her little peachblow face framed by
the sables, drew a deep sigh. “Oh, Bob,” she murmured, “they are both
lovely--just lovely. But, Bob, don’t be angry with me, will you?”

Bob was practical; he did not commit himself. “That depends,” he
croaked, with raven uncertainty.

“I can’t help it,” she said. “I’m sorry, but somehow I feel as if we
ought not to meet again after to-night.”

Durand could be rude. “What does that mean?” he asked harshly. “More
money?”

“Oh, you vile man! Do you measure everything by money? No, a thousand
times! It’s because I get so blue sometimes. I can’t help it. I try to
be brave.” Durand responded with a slight and unenthusiastic grunt.
“But it’s wrong, Bob,” she persisted conscientiously, “absolutely
wrong. Poor boy! We’re getting too fond of each other, and neither of
us has the courage to say so. Oh, _why_ is every happy thing in this
world wrong?”

“You’re cuckoo!” was Durand’s unsympathetic comment. “Stay with me and
you’ll wear diamonds.”

“When I’m with you,” she confessed, with a touch of shamefacedness,
“I’m just happy--absolutely. Every woman, I suppose, gets lonesome
when she’s away from”--she looked shyly up--“the only person in the
world she cares anything about--and the only one that cares anything
in the world about her. Oh!” She sprang forward from the cushions with
a hysterical little laugh--as if to drag gaiety from the very teeth of
fell despondency. Durand slipped his arm behind her, to encourage this
flash of lightheartedness. “Didn’t Mr. Simms,” she bubbled, “look funny
at Wheaton Sunday night, eating that half-raw ravioli and sputtering
talk all the while! That man’s certainly a scream.” Whereupon Maymie
gave a spirited and excellent imitation, to Durand’s great enjoyment,
of Simms. “Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, putting the strong right arm
resolutely from her waist, and shaking her shoulders as she nestled
back into the down and looked out of the side window at the blur of
passing cars.

“What the devil’s the matter?” demanded Durand. “I don’t like freaky
women!”

“I’m sad, Bob, that’s all. What about?” she asked, echoing his
question, but without the expletive pointing it. “Oh, everything. Here
I am, almost without friends----”

“The Simmses are good enough friends, aren’t they?”

“Only because they want to do what you want done, Bob. They wouldn’t
_look_ at me, if it weren’t for you! My own friends will all be cutting
me, as soon as I’m seen out with you. What has a poor girl got nowadays
but her reputation?”

Durand grunted. His companion flamed, and he had to come through, as
Judge Harrison would say.

“Haven’t I said I’d marry you when I get a divorce?” he demanded,
drawing her to him.

“Then there’s poor Louise,” she murmured resignedly in his arms. “What
about her?”

He appeared to feel not even annoyance at the infamy of his wife’s name
on his trull’s lips. “What about poor me?” he blurted out. “Haven’t I
told you I’d take good care of her?”

“But how does little Maymie know you wouldn’t want Louise back when
you’re tired of Maymie? Oh, Bob!” She threw her entire remaining store
of reluctance into her appeal. “Give me up!”

“You’re cuckoo,” he said soothingly. “Get over it.”

He made little of her now feeble attempts to resist his importunities.
She only managed to protest he was terrible and to beg him to go back
to his wife.

_Facilis descensus Averni._ Particularly after the first few trips.




CHAPTER VIII

THREE YEARS AFTER


In June, 1919, Janeway’s Fond du Lac offices occupied space embracing
the northeast corner of the eighth floor of the Durand Building, in
which the legal department and the executive offices of the Durand
Companies were housed. As the first so-called skyscraper--though only
an eight-story building--built in Fond du Lac, the Durand Building was
noticeable in the business district for its cream-white terra-cotta
exterior and marble interior. It stood as a substantial monument to the
success of the steel industry in Fond du Lac, and to the progressive
ideas of Robert Durand, who had been responsible, just prior to the
great war, for the elegance of the building.

Janeway’s private office had the advantage of a corner facing the lake
on two sides, and of profiting by the sun and the lake breezes. The
room itself reflected the surroundings of a successful corporation
lawyer. The doors and trim were mahogany, the walls beige, and the
Mauresque rug green. The furnishings were simple. In the centre of
the room--which was large--and facing the door stood a substantial
and commodious mahogany table. Above the fireplace hung autographed
portraits of two ex-Presidents; a portrait of the Chief Justice of
the United States, autographed, hung between them. Against an inner
wall stood a simple bookcase, filled not with law-books, but with books
that had been read and given a place of honor higher than one in the
general library or in the law libraries of the outer offices. Janeway
was one of those professional men that know books and talk books that
are outside their professional reading-ground. They talk them to their
friends and clients. They thus make the source of pleasure they derive
from general reading an asset in their business equipment. For to know
or seem to know what the world is talking and reading about is, among
successful American business men, an asset.

On the table lay a leather-covered blotting-pad. A telephone, a buzzer,
an ink-well, and a slender silver rose vase, without a rose, comprised
the rest of the table furnishings. Janeway’s revolving chair, at the
back of the table, stood at an angle to the two office entrances--one
from a private corridor, the other from the outside offices. Three
other chairs, available for conference, were placed against the walls.
The effect of the room was one of coldness and formality, and its
aspect was in tone with the spirit of its deliberations.

On the first morning in June, Kennedy, standing at the table and alone
in the room, was laying Janeway’s mail, opened, together with files of
newspaper clippings, on the table, when the outer office door opened
and Gertrude Durand came in, closing the door hastily behind her.
Gertrude, in a white corduroy suit, with a black sport hat, looked very
prosperous, but a little upset; her excitement showed in her wide-open
eyes and the heightened color of her cheeks. She hastened to Kennedy,
exclaiming: “Oh, Jim!”

Kennedy, never seriously disturbed, promptly kissed her, and pausing
with the letters he was distributing, spoke calmly. “Has your cook
struck, honey? What got you up so early?”

“Have you seen the morning papers, about the fight at the meeting last
night?”

He pointed. “The stuff’s all here.”

“After what’s happened,” declared Gertrude, “Mr. Janeway and Bob are
certain to quarrel.”

“Make no mistake,” returned Kennedy, with poise. “Mr. Janeway and Big
Brother _have_ quarrelled. At ten minutes past ten o’clock last night,
to be precise, I placed Mr. Janeway’s resignation as counsel for the
Durand interests in Robert’s hands--and let me tell you he was full
angry when he read it--with Simms and with me and Janeway and everybody
else.”

“And Mr. Janeway,” said Gertrude, still looking wide-eyed at her
fiancé, “had more influence with Bob than any man living.”

“Always and honorably excepting Mrs. Maymie Montgomery, baby.”

“But she’s not a man.”

“Sometimes I think she is; sometimes I think she isn’t. I read once
about a Frenchman, who, by usurping the privileges of the opposite
sex, inspired some doubt concerning his own. Maybe Maymie’s doing
things in disguise.”

“But for us to lose Mr. Janeway now----”

“We haven’t lost Mr. Janeway. Far from it.”

“But he has lost his influence with Bob----”

“Wrong again. The head of the Durand Steel Corporation will pay even
more attention to what Henry Janeway says as an enemy than he would
as a friend. Brother Bob is afraid of Janeway. I hate to say it of as
big a figure as our own Brother--for he’s my brother as well as yours,
Trudie--he _can’t lose me_,” insisted Kennedy. “I’m going to marry you.
I promised my mother I would, and I’m going to keep my word.”

“Stop your everlasting nonsense, and tell me about this fight. What
_did_ happen?”

Kennedy adjusted himself to the recital with the precision of a careful
man in telling a story to a woman--a precision meant to forestall
unnecessary questions. “What did happen,” said he, “was only this.
The Merchants’ Association called a citizens’ meeting last night to
consider means to avert ‘our’ strike. Brother, they claim, won’t
listen to reason, and the strike, you might say, is on right now.
Bishop Marion was asked by the Merchants’ Association to preside at
this meeting. The men agreed; Simms was asked; he agreed to it. He was
strong for the Bishop as a peacemaker, and appealed personally to the
Bishop to act.

“But the Bishop was suspicious of Simms and his overtures. He wouldn’t
promise. So Simms and Brother coaxed Janeway to ask the Bishop, which
he did--and the Bishop consented. But after it was all settled, Simms
found the Bishop was out for three shifts and eight hours--while ‘we’
are for two shifts and twelve hours, so Brother made up his mind to
trim Mr. Bishop. He asked Janeway to go to the meeting. Janeway didn’t
fancy the idea, and didn’t hesitate to say so, but he finally agreed to
go. Because he’s pretty well liked, Brother wanted him to represent the
corporation and say a word for the company side, see?

“So Mr. Janeway went. But Brother also told Simms to be at the meeting
with a bunch of strong-arm men, and told him to see that the meeting
went ‘our’ way.”

Gertrude uttered an exclamation.

“When the Bishop was nominated for chairman, Simms reneged. He bobbed
up and nominated a stool-pigeon of his own. He made a speech and
got a laugh going--among the strong-arms. The Bishop then proposed
to withdraw in favor of Simms’s man. The Merchants voted Simms down
and put in the Bishop. When Simms saw the talk was going against the
company, he began to row. He’d had a pretty good dinner, anyway. Pretty
soon his men started to break up the meeting--they were half full,
that’s about the size of it. Now some say Janeway was in the hall
when it happened, some say he came in just about the time Simms’s men
started to rush the Bishop. They claim Simms told ’em to; this morning,
according to _The Tribune_, he ‘indignantly’ denies it. Anyway, they
tried to urge the Bishop on a fox-trot through a second-story window,
and it started the biggest row ever pulled in Fond du Lac since the
night Jimmie Gentry threw the bantam fight at the armory.”

Gertrude followed the recital with bated breath. “Then what?” she
asked, as Kennedy paused.

“Well, when Henry Janeway got to the Bishop and got a chair into
action, the Bishop withdrew in good order to his second line. Then
some of the rolling-mill men got into the hall and went at Simms’s
strong-arms. A dozen or so huskies got mussed up pretty bad. That’s
_all_ there was to it.”

Gertrude drew a breath. “Great heavens, it’s enough! It means a
terrible break between Bob and Janeway.”

“It certainly looks as if Brother had spilled the beans.”

“Without Mr. Janeway I’ll never get Bob’s consent to marry you,” said
Gertrude gloomily.

Kennedy regarded her quietly. “I had to go to France, didn’t I? I
promised Brother if I got killed I wouldn’t marry you. But I didn’t
promise him I would get killed. I’m back four months now, and we’re
going to get married, quarrel or no quarrel, strike or no strike,
Brother or no Brother. There’s nothing else to it.”

The corridor door, responding to the action of a pass-key, opened,
and Janeway walked into the room. His eyes lighted at the sight of
Gertrude. Three years had changed him little. He carried himself as
stiffly as ever, and in the variations of the years had lost nothing
of his positive air--an air that now rarely disappeared completely,
even when pleading before a court. His expression was usually one
of indifference and preoccupation, and at thirty-eight he was only
somewhat worse than at thirty-five.

Yet Janeway understood courtesy, and when he had a mind to do so, could
extend it. Always carefully dressed, for business reasons as well as
from choice, he was of the type of men that are described as hard on
their clothes, and on this morning his tweed suit, with its soft roll
sack coat, showed he had forgotten to lay it aside.

“Mr. Janeway!” exclaimed Gertrude. “Jim’s been telling me about the
fight last night. Why, it must have been awful!”

Janeway laughed. Kennedy took his hat. “Thank you, Jim. Why,
Gertrude”--he turned toward her with little concern--“there was nothing
to it.”

“But the newspapers!”

“Never believe the newspapers. Did they tell you,” asked Janeway, “that
Jim saved my life and covered our retreat?”

Gertrude looked at Kennedy in amazement. “You never even told me you
were there! Jim Kennedy, you can explain this evening.”

“There was no retreat to cover, believe me, Trudie,” returned Kennedy.
“It was as fast going for three minutes as you’d want to see; but when
Simms’s death battalion broke, it was a débâcle.”

“Jim,” interposed Janeway, “is a blood relative of the Irishman that
saw a fight in the corner of a saloon, and asked whether it was a
private affair, or if anybody might mix in. Sit down, Gertrude.”

“I can’t stay.”

“You must. And you must excuse me just long enough to write a short
note.”

Kennedy was attentive. “Shall I send Miss Blenkiron, Mr. Janeway?” he
asked, providing a chair for Gertrude.

“I’ll write this myself,” said Janeway, seating himself.

He reached for note-paper, which Kennedy placed near his hand. While
writing in a deliberate and somewhat awkward fashion, he spoke to
Gertrude. “How’s your baby club coming on?”

“The Day Nursery? Perfectly fine--the only trouble is to find babies
for it. I suppose,” she added ruefully, “their mothers hate to trust
them with any institution a Durand’s connected with. I’m interrupting
your note,” she said as Janeway paused.

“This is not important--only a little surprise for your brother, Bob.
Not much of a surprise, either, I guess,” he added.

“Well, _I_ have a surprise for him, this morning,” remarked Gertrude,
with an air of importance.

“Jim,” said Janeway, folding and enclosing his note, “I want this to
go up-stairs now, to Mr. Durand’s office. Don’t send it; take it
yourself. If he’s there, hand it to him yourself. If he’s not, give it
to his secretary to be delivered, without fail, when he comes in. Did
you get Simms?”

“I did. He said he’d be here by ten-thirty; it’s nearly that now.”

Kennedy left with the note. Janeway turned to Gertrude. “Now for your
surprise for your brother. I hope it’s not that you’re going to break
your engagement and didn’t want Jim to hear about it?”

Gertrude liked Janeway when he threw off seriousness. “Don’t ever
believe _that_,” she laughed.

“What is it, then?”

“Louise is back.”

With these simple words Gertrude achieved an unlooked-for effect.
Janeway, a man under pretty good control, and on familiar terms with
alarum, straightened perceptibly. “What do you mean?” he asked, almost
involuntarily.

“Just what I say.”

“Mrs. Durand here?” She heard in his dry, hard tone the effect of her
news. “In Fond du Lac?” he asked, almost irritably. “When did she come?”

“Just last night. And had to come in the midst of this riot!”

Janeway regarded his informant as he would a witness. “Where is she
from?”

“Paris.”

“You hadn’t heard from her for a long time?”

“Not for months. Nobody had heard from her--not even her brother,
George--not the bank.”

His eyes, which had regarded her searchingly, were almost half closed a
moment under his stubborn brows. Then he looked suddenly up. “Where is
she staying--not in her own house?”

“With me.”

Each question, coming slowly, seemed as if just occurring to his mind.
“She’s well?”

“Quite.”

“Changed?”

“No--though I don’t know that I should say _that_, either,” added
Gertrude, correcting herself. “She’s just the same, yet in some way
she’s different. I can’t say just exactly how,” she went on, perplexed,
“but”--Gertrude sustained the inflection an instant--“she _has_ changed
a little.”

“The war and her contact with it would account for that,” hazarded
Janeway. “The war changed everybody,” he added dogmatically. “All of
us. Even those who opposed it the most--nobody escaped. But if the war
has changed Mrs. Durand”--he went on, with his usual bluntness--“it
must be for worse. It could hardly be for better.”

“I’m glad to hear you stand up for her,” said Gertrude stoutly. “Bob
has treated her shamefully. And she’s worried to death now over his
divorce suit; that’s one reason why I came this morning to see you, Mr.
Janeway. If she knew, she wouldn’t approve of my speaking to you at
all. But I just know you want her to have fair play--just as I want her
to.”

Janeway regarded Gertrude’s resolute air with contemplative interest.
“You’re not afraid of anybody, are you?”

“Uncle Sid probably told you that. Well, this is what I want to say:
She’s going to consult some lawyer--some one to protect her interests.”

“Why, Simms engaged old Mr. Johnson to represent her.”

“But that poor man is doddering!”

“Mr. Johnson”--Janeway paused drily--“is certainly no longer
aggressive.”

“Whom _can_ she consult?” asked Gertrude anxiously. “I don’t know, of
course; and I asked Jim, and he said he’d talk it over with you. But
there’s no time to lose.”

Janeway paused again. “Advise her not to consult any one,” he said at
length; “at least, not to-day. Her interests will not suffer. Tell her
I say so, and assure her I’ll be responsible for what I say.”

Gertrude rose, relieved. “Then I ought to see her before she goes out
this morning.”

“Do,” assented Janeway, rising in turn. A file clerk opened the office
door.

“Mr. Simms, Mr. Janeway.”

“He may come in.” Janeway, walking after Gertrude, opened the corridor
door. They encountered Kennedy returning from up-stairs. “Did you
deliver the note?” asked Janeway.

“Mr. Durand hadn’t come in. I gave it to his secretary.”

“Will you intercept Mrs. Durand and tell her what I said?” asked
Janeway, turning to Gertrude.

“If I’m not too late.”

“Don’t be too late,” he urged peremptorily. “I’ll call on you both this
afternoon.”

“About what time?”

“Say four o’clock.”

He was back at his table when Simms walked in. Simms, past forty,
was portly, tall, and muscular, with the jocular manner known to
American business men as that of a “mixer.” Usually alert and voluble
in utterance, he was a man with a wide circle of those acquaintances
not properly termed friends. His utterance was jerky. He wore a
soft black hat of the sort affected by congressional statesmen and
country lawyers, and as a reinforcement to professional dignity,
a double-breasted frock coat, the tails of which bobbed with his
brisk steps. His face and brown eyes bore traces of whiskey--though
not much--and a closely trimmed mustache gave his mouth a cropped
appearance.

He tossed his hat and laid his cane on the table, and greeted Janeway
with a laugh, harsh but unctuous.

“Well, Henry, you played the devil last night; you certainly did. And
you can do it. Seen Durand this morning?”

Janeway’s response was of an indifferent sort. “Not yet. Sit down.”

“Kennedy telephoned you wanted to talk to me. About the riot, eh?”
Simms broke into a laugh.

“No,” said Janeway, cutting him off almost impatiently. “It’s about
this divorce suit of Durand’s.”

“Well, what about it?” asked Simms briskly. There was a note of
suspicion in his tone and manner.

“I spoke to you yesterday,” said Janeway, “about the unpleasant
allegations in his bill--allegations that were not only unnecessary but
bad for public effect and of a nature to reflect on Mrs. Durand--her
cruelty, for example; her absenting herself from her home--neglecting
it. Why drag that bunk into it?” Janeway sat back in his chair with
his head inclined forward; his chin rested on the bow of his cravat.
He thus regarded Simms from under overhanging eyebrows, and spoke in a
manner indicating not alone that the subject was distasteful, but that
he was very angry.

“Have you substituted me out of the case?” he demanded shortly.

“Not yet, Janeway. You only asked me to yesterday afternoon. I told
Durand last night you had made such a demand. I’ll attend to it.”

Simms was ready for an encounter. Naturally afraid of Janeway, whose
influence as the chief legal reliance of Durand he feared, Simms had
now remembrance of the events of the evening before to embolden him;
and though without knowledge of the resignation, he felt that he knew
what Janeway’s conduct must precipitate. “Look here,” he continued,
with just enough pause to stiffen his utterance, “can I ask you a fair
question?”

“You might try,” suggested Janeway, in a contemptuous utterance.

Simms was too intent on the matter in hand to take notice of the retort.

“Doesn’t it look almighty queer for you”--Simms went on--“Durand’s own
lawyer as much as I am----”

Janeway broke in with delicate shading: “Not quite as much.”

Simms pushed harder. “For you, his own general counsel, to be calling
me down, his personal attorney, on a bill that I file for his divorce?
Say!”

Janeway showed no impatience. “I don’t feel I can have an unfair bill
railroaded through against Mrs. Durand. And what’s flat,” he added,
with cattish emphasis, “I won’t.”

Simms brought fresh energy into play. “Hell’s delight, man! Hasn’t
Johnson got the case in hand for Mrs. Durand? Wasn’t Mrs. Durand
consulted about it--notified by Johnson the bill had been filed, and
didn’t she cable him to look out for her interests?”

Janeway shrugged his shoulders. “Johnson is a cipher. You know that.
And you rigged his appointment.”

“Rigged it! On her cabled assent? Janeway, I don’t understand you!”

Janeway became increasingly contemptuous. “I understand you--that’s
enough. Mrs. Durand is not to be slandered in a bill brought by you or
any one else. She is entitled to respectful treatment at the hands of
every one--including her own husband.”

“She refused to live with him, didn’t she, when she went to Europe?”

“Would you live with him?”

Simms coughed. “Hem--er--I’m not on the witness-stand, am I, Janeway?”

“You’re not making a stump speech, either. What’s the present status of
this suit?”

Simms seemed both placated and placating. “The decree will be entered
this morning.”

“What sum has been named for her in the settlement?”

Simms, as if scenting objection, adopted a frank and manly tone. “I had
quite a time,” he began, “bringing Durand around to a suitable figure.”

“I told him, myself, at the time he asked me, what he ought to do,”
interposed Janeway, with no effort to conceal his impatience, if not
disgust.

Simms hastened on as if aware there were rapids to shoot. “I know that;
I know it. But he kicked when it came up, Henry; he certainly kicked.”

“Name the sum.”

“Well--er--in addition to the large amount representing her estate from
her father--you asked, you know, to have that fixed after negotiation
with Fargo--Durand now adds the further sum of fifty thousand dollars.”

“Fifty thousand dollars!” Janeway jumped in his chair. His face grew
dark as it flushed, and his unruly hair flopped forward. “What do you
mean?” he demanded explosively. “She should have ten times that.”

Simms was not unused to outbreaks against injustice. “Easy, easy! Why
get excited? Why----”

Janeway, standing over his table, pressed the buzzer angrily. “Of all
the contemptible things that scoundrel has been guilty of!”

Simms sat down, not unhappy over the outbreak. Kennedy opened the
office door. Janeway was as cold and cracky as ice again, but
Kennedy knew his turns so well that he saw his anger. “Kennedy!” he
snapped, “You said Durand had made me an attorney of record in this
Durand-Durand case?”

“I did, Mr. Janeway.”

“Get Judge Bellows on the ’phone before court opens,” Janeway went on.
“Ask him to take no further action in the case until I can see him.
Report to me, please, Kennedy.”

“Yes, Mr. Janeway. Bishop Marion is in the office.”

“Show him in,” directed Janeway instantly.

Simms looked alarmed, being in no wise minded to encounter the Bishop.
He rose and stood in front of the table. “It _isn’t_ enough; I know
that; but you know what kind of a man Bob is to handle.”

“He’ll mend his ways before he gets what he wants in this case.”

“And look here, Henry.” Simms leaned forward in friendly fashion.
“Durand is coming in here this morning. There’ll be pretty hard words
flying. Don’t say anything to hurt me with Durand. Nothing about
any--er--old matters, eh?”

Janeway gave assurance indifferently. “You need feel no uneasiness.”

But Simms was really solicitous. “Honor bright?”

“Are you afraid of my word?” asked Janeway sharply.

“No, no. No, no. Your word’s enough. Well!” Simms laughed sardonically.
“Things are mixed; they’re pretty well mixed! Happy days!” And picking
up his hat and stick, he walked quickly to the corridor door and was
gone.




CHAPTER IX

THE QUARREL


Bishop Marion came toward Janeway half laughing, and with a questioning
expression, as one might greet another after a mutual shock.

“Mr. Janeway, you have put me very much in your debt,” declared the
Bishop.

Janeway regarded him gravely. “I hope you are not given to sarcasm,
Bishop?”

“Sarcasm?” echoed Bishop Marion, in surprise.

“Never,” exclaimed Janeway, cutting off the Bishop’s further words,
and speaking in wrathful emphasis, “have I been so humiliated as I was
by the deception practised on me last night--and on you. I hope you
believed my assurances----”

Bishop Marion only laughed, pointing to himself. “Isn’t my presence
excellent evidence of that? I came precisely to tell you that I needed
no assurance of your entire good faith in the circumstances, and, I
repeat, I _am_ in your debt.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Janeway, regarding his visitor closely, showed that he felt more at
ease. “I can’t explain it,” he said, in lighter vein. “No doubt I
ought to be ashamed to admit it. But I love a riot--especially in a
room where there are a few things loose. That kind of a situation
affords the closest chance to an honest expression of opinion that a
corporation lawyer ever gets.” Janeway waved his hand to a chair. “Be
seated, Bishop.”

“My bones aren’t of great value,” continued Bishop Marion, sitting in
the chair Simms had just left, “but when men desert me after having
urged me into a mess--to have you come to my rescue as you did last
night with a good right-and-left----”

“Pardon, Bishop,” interposed Janeway. “Honor to whom honor is due--it
was a chair.”

“But I feared that last night’s affair might be your undoing,” the
Bishop went on, more seriously, “so I came this morning to proffer my
poor friendship and poorer counsel. I even thought I might myself go to
Mr. Durand and tell him how badly his real interests are being managed
in this trouble with the men--tell him the truth.”

Janeway, contained, indulged his vein of contemptuous irony. “Why tell
the truth, Bishop? Why tell the truth when you know it is always an
injury to society? Constant annoyances are caused by the obstinacy of
people in telling the truth.”

“What should you tell--lies?” asked the Bishop, with a patient smile.

“Not at all,” returned Janeway blandly. “Tell what ought to be the
truth--tell that which prevails, that which is accepted among our
best people, our thinkers, our educators, our men of letters, as the
truth. Why try all the time, or any of the time, to overturn veridical
conventions--why stir things up?”

“Particularly,” assented the Bishop, amused, “if--as is usually the
case nowadays--the stick you stir with is no closer to the truth than
the conventions you disturb.”

“The truth,” continued Janeway, “is like the news. No newspaper gives
you the news; it gives you what the proprietor thinks you need for
news. Of course,” he added, “I wouldn’t for one moment assume to say
what you should or should not do, about seeing Durand. But so far as
concerns myself, I may say--very frankly--that you need not give what
happened last night a thought. It could not possibly in any way be,
as you express it, my undoing. But quite aside from that, I really
shouldn’t attempt, if I were you, to see Mr. Durand; you would only
expose yourself to insult. He is very bitter against you. The roots of
what you fear may be my undoing go far back of last night’s events.

“Some time ago I signed a pardon application for one of our convicted
dynamiters. He was guilty enough, but without the vicious character of
the other three fellows, who used him as a tool. And the doctors said
recently he was dying of tuberculosis.

“His wife had been haunting me for months; she said my signature would
carry her petition. Once she brought the three children along--all
little tots--darned and mended to the last stitch, and scrupulously
clean; she’s a good woman--a victim of the sins of others. I always
refused her, but she always came back. Kennedy, I suspect, abetted
her--the fellow has a sneaking pity for the forlorn; and I knew he was
in it, for she never appeared at inopportune moments--never when I was
ill-tempered or under pressure. And there never were any demonstrations
at my refusals; no tears, very few words at any time, just a mute
appeal of the eyes; and when I said ‘No,’ silent departure. If she’d
quarrelled with me it would have made it easier to turn her down.

“Finally, to be rid of her, I laid down what I thought an impossible
condition. ‘If you’ll bring me your husband’s written confession of
his part in the affair and it strikes me as the truth, I’ll sign your
application.’

“She went away downhearted. But in a week she was back. What won’t
a woman do for love of a man! She had been to the penitentiary
herself, coaxed the truth from her husband--think of how she must have
pleaded!--written it down herself--and it was beautifully written--and
placed it in my hands--only asking that I make no public use of it.

“I read the story, handed it back to her, asked her for her petition,
and signed it. Through our traffic department I then arranged
transportation for the whole family to Arizona.

“After all those months, those pitiful failures, those constant
rebuffs, she never broke till that moment. I was never so upset in my
life. She caught my hands, dropped on her knees and kissed them in a
frenzy of tears.”

“When the end comes, Mr. Janeway,” said the Bishop simply, “that is a
moment that should console you.”

“It doesn’t console me just now,” continued Janeway. “I keep thinking
I may have held out too long; I worry for fear the cuss will die. Not
that I care for him--but that would make her victory a barren one.
‘Now, go to it,’ I said to her rather shamefacedly. ‘Beat the doctors
if you can.’

“You’d hardly believe it, but Durand was violently angry with me for
signing that petition. He got it all from the newspapers, of course. It
was our first open rupture. I took the position that the responsibility
was purely mine; I had secured the man’s conviction. Every one
concerned felt that justice had been satisfied in the fellow’s case; I
was the last man holding out. I made no apologies to Durand; in fact, I
talked pretty sharp to him for abusing me. It was a minor incident, but
it only showed he and I never could get along.”

“I knew a little of that case,” said Bishop Marion, “together,” he
added, “with certain incidents you have not recounted. She told me
of the check you gave her to ‘get her on her feet,’ as you expressed
it, in Arizona. It was that that broke her down. And why,” said the
Bishop again, “shouldn’t I confess that there was, besides Kennedy,
a further conspirator in her persistence in dogging your steps? I am
afraid it was Kennedy and I together who told her that if she would be
_patient_--you would not ultimately refuse her.”

Janeway, laughing rather cynically, tossed his head. “Wheels within
wheels; conspiracies on every hand,” he remarked, slowing down. “And we
think, each of us, that nobody fools us!”

“This unhappy man,” continued the Bishop, “was one of my own stray
sheep--not of my immediate flock, for, of course, strangers are sent in
to do jobs such as that. But he was, or should have been, a Catholic,
and his poor wife is an exemplary one. She came here to Fond du Lac
during his trial and has lived here ever since, supporting herself and
her children by doing washing.”

Something in the Bishop’s words woke Janeway up. He looked suddenly at
his visitor and pointed his finger at him. “Tell me, Bishop Marion,
do you and your fellow bishops feel no culpability in not advocating
your own labor-unions for your working men? Don’t you to-day, in
effect, force your own men--in order to protect themselves from
capitalistic greed--to join unions where there is care neither for God
nor man?--unions infested with thugs and teeming with extortioners
and murderers, as American labor-unions are to-day? Doesn’t every
criminal act of remorseless union-labor villainy point its finger at
the shepherds who virtually condemn their sheep to such associations?
You warn your people to beware of evil communications, and practically
condemn your Christian working-man to take hands with villainy and
crime.”

“My dear Mr. Janeway,” returned the Bishop, unhesitatingly, “your
views and mine are too closely alike on that subject to leave room for
discussion. Some day a Ketteler will arise among us to tackle that
problem--along with our many others.”

“My difficulties with Mr. Durand,” continued Janeway, reverting in
composed fashion to the subject of the Bishop’s solicitude, “really
originate in a fundamental difference of opinion concerning the labor
policy of the corporation--a difference in principle--which, as you
know, is always a serious matter. Have you ever noticed,” he continued,
as if for a moment digressing, “that radical men grow more conservative
as they grow older? And that conservative men, being older, grow more
radical?

“I think something like that has happened to me,” Janeway went on,
without giving chance for answer. “I grew up on Adam Smith and Bentham
and the _laissez-faire_ school of political economists. But I’ve left
them.”

“And where are you now?” asked the Bishop.

Janeway did not even shrug his shoulders. “Nowhere,” he said, with
contempt in his tone.

“Like too many others, I fear,” returned the Bishop.

“But I do,” resumed Janeway, with characteristic decision, “recognize
in your Church--though far from my ken--a real constructive element of
the only civilized society we know by experience anything about--our
own. I recognize in it--as many thinking men do--a bulwark of
social order. I don’t mean Mark Hanna’s social policeman--I mean a
counter-check, a poise, a pretty good code to back up against. And
if Christianity with a voice of authority can’t step in between
capitalistic hogs like Durand and corrupt labor leaders such as we are
cursed with nowadays, we may as well give up our ideas of civilization
and all go to making bombs. In the social warfare of to-day there’s no
half-way between Christianity and dynamite.”

Bishop Marion listened attentively. “Newman once said,” he remarked,
“that if men would define their terms, discussion would cease. But it
would put you too far afield to ask you to define Christianity. There’s
another thing about you that puzzles me,” he observed. Janeway only
looked at him. “To the prosperous man whatever _is_, is right; to the
unfortunate man whatever is, is wrong. You puzzle me a little, because
my rule doesn’t quite work with you.”

The office door opened. A clerk stepped into the room. “Mr. Durand, Mr.
Janeway.”

“I’ll see him presently,” snapped Janeway.

The clerk, as if not knowing whether to say more, paused doubtfully.
“He seems somewhat in a hurry,” he ventured.

“He usually does,” returned Janeway, unmoved. “What’s your haste?” he
asked, with a suspicion of impatience, as the clerk retired and Bishop
Marion rose. “There’s not the slightest reason for any.”

“He shouldn’t meet me here,” said the Bishop seriously. “If what you
tell me is correct, it would only get you into more trouble.”

Janeway laughed. “There the question of ‘terms’ bobs up again! But in
point of fact, nothing could get me into more ‘trouble.’ Sit down, do.”

“No,” returned the Bishop, resolved to withdraw, “I have really said
all I have to say; except, perhaps,” he added, and he paused with a
questioning expression as he regarded the lawyer, “to ask----”

“Go ahead,” said Janeway.

“Why men like you, while professing to admire Christianity, stand
so comfortably aloof from it?” The Bishop was retreating toward the
corridor door.

“By my word!” exclaimed Janeway, signalling with the buzzer for
Durand’s admittance, and following Bishop Marion in a leisurely manner.
“I hardly expected, so soon after the episode of the chair, to be
accused of standing aloof from Christianity!”

“You know what I mean,” returned Bishop Marion, in like vein, “and it
applies, Mr. Janeway, to men like you!”

“I suppose,” responded Janeway lazily, “I’m like the man that was
hard up. His minister complained he ought to be doing something for
religion. ‘It’s a debt you owe the Lord,’ he urged. ‘I know it,’
admitted the man. ‘I’d like to do something. But the Lord isn’t
pressing me as hard as the rest of my creditors.’”

Robert Durand flung open the office door. In his keen glance at both
men he made no effort to conceal his hostile attitude.

“Interrupting your conference, I’m afraid,” he said harshly.

Janeway stood quite unruffled. “It is closed.”

Durand, evidently laboring under pent-up wrath, glared at the Bishop.
“I congratulate you on securing the co-operation of Mr. Janeway in your
efforts to make trouble among my men.”

The challenge could hardly be ignored; indeed, Bishop Marion made
no effort to ignore it, though he spoke without feeling. “Much as I
prize Mr. Janeway’s good-will, I must say I need yours even more, Mr.
Durand, in any effort, not to make trouble among your men, but to avert
industrial warfare in this community.”

“What I hate to see, in any kind of a fight, is hypocrisy,” said
Durand, under control, but biting off his words with emphasis. “You
agitate under the lying pretense that your own people are affected.
Less than one-third of our men, by actual count, belong to your church.”

“They all belong to humanity, to God. They are men with wives,
children, souls.”

“All possible dupes and supporters for fat priests who won’t work
themselves.”

The Bishop eyed his accuser calmly until he had done speaking; then
he regarded rather deprecatingly his own lean proportions. “Perhaps
I deserve no credit for not being fat; I am personally somewhat the
victim of a faulty assimilation. But what would it really avail me,
Mr. Durand, to retort in kind, and speak of fat dividends and the
scandalous profiteering of the last three years? My fight, if you deem
it such, against working men twelve hours a day and seven days a week
is the fight of humanity as well as of Christianity. Your methods breed
human hyenas. And if you don’t lift them above their ferocity, they
will one day tear you and your class limb from limb. It is men like
you,” said the Bishop, without either haste or undue feeling, “as well
as other men--that Christianity strives to protect from the certain
consequences of their own folly.”

“And this,” remarked Durand, looking at Janeway as the Bishop passed
through the door and closed it behind him, “is the sort of Socialistic
eloquence that finds sympathy with a man who draws fifty thousand
dollars a year----”

“My salary,” retorted Janeway, “paid by the corporation of which
you are president, was fixed at your suggestion--not at mine. And
remember--you came to me--not I to you.”

“--who draws fifty thousand a year to look after my legal interests,”
persisted Durand bitterly.

“But not one dollar to look after your illegal or inhuman interests,”
interrupted Janeway evenly.

“Fine discrimination,” commented Durand, not repressing his sneer.

“Fine discrimination,” returned Janeway composedly, “keeps many
capitalists out of the penitentiary.”

Durand had ample reason to know that his counsel was a difficult
antagonist in such an encounter as he was persisting in, but his anger
made him reckless. “It’s time for you and me to have an understanding,”
he blurted out. The very realization of his helplessness at Janeway’s
hands enraged him the more; he was like a bull faced by a toreador.

“I agree with you,” returned Janeway.

“Men on the staff of the corporation,” said Durand, regaining, with the
hackneyed pronouncement, something of his dignity and pompousness, “may
honestly differ with me in my policies. But I will have strict loyalty
from them, or their resignations.”

“My resignation was placed in your hands last night. And it has been
there before, you know,” added Janeway.

“This is the second time you’ve played traitor to me.”

“I think it’s the third,” said Janeway. “The first was when you asked
me to help send Simms to the United States Senate.”

“You refused a year ago to get my divorce for me.”

“Getting a divorce, tainted with fraud, for the President is no part of
the duties of the general counsel of the Durand Steel Corporation.”

Durand burst into a rage. “General counsel of hell and damnation----”

“Something like that,” interposed Janeway.

“When you refer to my divorce bill as tainted with fraud, you say what
is absolutely false.”

Janeway regarded him with a more malevolent look than had heretofore
entered his eyes. “Were I your wife’s advocate,” he said, “I should
correct you even on that point. No fraud?” he echoed, stirred by
Durand’s denial. “No fraud? You signed my name to this complaint as
attorney, making me in effect party to your contemptible charges.”

“You _were_ my attorney!” roared Durand.

Janeway almost rose in his chair. “Not _your_ attorney; never _your_
attorney. I told you that a year ago. You had no right to join me as
your attorney without my consent. You had no right to file with my name
on it a complaint I never saw. Fraud?” repeated Janeway with stinging
emphasis, “your hands are dripping with fraud! I warn you, Durand, in
so far as you have attempted to mix me in it, this injustice to your
wife shall be righted.”

Durand, too angry for prudence, kept on. “If it wasn’t too late,” he
almost shouted, “I’ll guarantee you’d take her case against me.” The
retort that it might not be too late was on Janeway’s lips, but he
suppressed it. Durand, mistaking his silence, blundered ahead. “It
wouldn’t surprise me, if after acting as my legal adviser, you’d stoop
to anything.”

“Since you mention it,” agreed Janeway, looking coolly out of the
window, “it wouldn’t greatly surprise me, either.”

“A man,” exclaimed Durand, “that will take from me fifty thousand a
year, and get up as you did last night, in a public meeting, and defend
this meddling Bishop--the worst agitator in Fond du Lac--a man that’s
a traitor under cover to every legitimate business enterprise in this
town--why, I wouldn’t call myself a man to do it!”

Cumulative abuse, even if stupid, sometimes bores into an antagonist.
Janeway’s eyes lighted again with anger. “Don’t call yourself a man,
Durand!” he said, pounding in his words with his heavy voice. “It
would spoil the one word that decency may still lay claim to! Before
you agreed to this meeting, you asked my advice. I warned you what
was coming. I told you I’d never defend a twelve-hour day, seven
days a week. You followed other counsel. Then you asked me to use my
influence, when Simms had failed, to arrange this meeting and have
Marion there, promising me everything should be open and aboveboard.

“I did my part. And you didn’t keep your word. That’s the trouble
with you, your word is never dependable. You went to work and packed
the meeting--a public meeting called to urge arbitration to avoid a
disastrous strike. You packed it with your own thugs, to assault the
Bishop and those that opposed you--you’ve been known to boast you’d
drive him out of town. I told you what would happen if you attempted
violence.

“By Heaven, I sometimes wonder what you take me for. Because I sent the
union-labor dynamiters from this town to the penitentiary, you seem to
expect me to countenance methods of yours as vicious as theirs.

“Durand,” persisted Janeway, ignoring interruptions and forcing his
words on Durand with savage energy, “I’m no longer speaking to you
as your legal and friendly adviser. But if I were, I couldn’t tell
you other than this: You can’t safely use force and violence in this
country toward men that don’t happen to agree with you. This isn’t
Europe--this is America, and you can’t enslave men or hire brutes to
beat up those that oppose your rapacity, without sometime paying the
penalty. I don’t know and don’t care how much money you’ve made in the
last three years, but with your stupendous profits you can ill afford
to stick out in a labor fight, even if your men become infected with
some of your own monstrous greed--and I can’t see but that they have
much right in this quarrel on their side. And don’t be too sure of
beating this shabby Bishop. He’ll give you a man’s fight before you’re
done; you’re not dealing now with a defenseless woman!”

It was Durand’s opportunity to sneer again. “It’s a pity, Janeway,” he
said coolly, “you couldn’t befriend her, too!”

The lawyer’s head jerked with the violence of his anger; his head fell
forward and his eyes shot fire.

“If she ever so much as raised her little finger to _me_ for help,” he
exclaimed, throwing himself viciously into his words, “I’d befriend
her, too quick!”

“Simms,” Durand blustered on defiantly, “tells me you’ve
‘demanded’”--he gave an unpleasant emphasis to the word--“to be
substituted out of my case. I want to tell you I’m glad of it. Don’t
plume yourself I need you in any way. I’ll have my divorce just the
same. And you can act as anybody’s attorney you dashed please.” He
flung the words at his former associate with the air of a man who,
casting off the last shackles of prudence, says exactly what he wants
to say to a man thoroughly hated.

Janeway’s chair, after his recent explosion, had been turned
sidewise, and he was gazing wrathfully out on the peaceful waters of
Lake Michigan. Listening to Durand’s contemptuous words, he swung
gradually around to face him as he ceased speaking, and regarded him
for an embarrassing instant intently but silently. Then he pushed
a letter-head slowly across the table. “I suppose,” he remarked
questioningly, “you mean what you say?”

Durand, an experienced poker player, “stood” on his hand. “I usually
mean what I say!” he retorted insolently.

Janeway was not to be moved from his composure. “I’ve no desire,” he
said, “to take advantage of an angry moment”--he spoke the words with
his accustomed deliberation. “But if you really are equal, for once, to
sticking to a statement, Durand, put that in writing.”

Unwilling to “take water,” as Kennedy would have expressed it, Durand
snatched the pen from the ink-well and wrote out the substance of his
words. He signed the statement with a flourish. Janeway had more than
once, and in all sincerity, complimented Durand on his clean, clear
handwriting. He refrained from doing so now.

Durand tossed the paper back with further bitter recriminations--but to
these Janeway made not the slightest response. He picked the paper up
just as Kennedy opened the office door. Perceiving Janeway’s attention
bent on the clearance in his hand, Kennedy hesitated. “What is it,
Kennedy?” Janeway asked, his voice falling back to its usual dryness.

Kennedy looked nonplussed at Durand. But Janeway’s impatience called
for a categorical answer. “Mrs. Durand, Mr. Janeway,” he said, as if
casting on the two angry men before him responsibility for any possible
scene.

“I will see her at once,” said Janeway instantly.

Durand, taken completely by surprise, and with words now sounding
ominous in his ears, reached for his hat as if accepting a challenge.
“Don’t let me interfere.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you wouldn’t interfere in the least,”
retorted Janeway, injecting as much contempt as he possibly could into
his words. “Kennedy,” he snapped, “show Mr. Durand out through the
corridor.”

He had been standing at the side of his table. He stood now truculently
watching Durand follow Kennedy, who went through the form of his orders
with becoming dignity. “Never you mind,” said Durand angrily. “I’m
quite equal to finding my way out of this office.”

Alone, Janeway turned once more toward his chair, passed his hand
nervously over his disordered hair--what Harrison irreverently termed
his jury hair--and, sitting down, picked up the paper Durand had
signed, and adjusted his nose-glasses. He glared at it an instant,
opened a private drawer and flung the paper into it, dropped his
glasses on the blotting-pad in front of him, turned sidewise, and,
flattening one hand abruptly on the table, stared again stolidly out on
the lake.




CHAPTER X

FACE TO FACE


The sound of footsteps brought Janeway to his feet; Gertrude Durand was
entering the room. Through the open door behind Gertrude he saw Kennedy
with Louise, as the two, talking, came slowly forward.

Gertrude sought Janeway impulsively. “Jim didn’t promise me all of
this,” he smiled.

Gertrude, too, was in good mood. “You say nice things, sometimes--for a
bachelor.”

“Bachelors,” he responded, “are less masters of the situation than
married men; they have to keep in practice.”

“I found her at home,” murmured Gertrude, speaking in rapid undertone,
“and brought her directly up. Jim said Bob was with you, so I told him
not to mention me. Now, Mr. Janeway, I’ve made Louise come to you. If
you’re not nice to her I’ll never speak to you again.”

She had barely time to say this much when Kennedy and Louise joined
them.

“I’ve only just learned you were back,” said Janeway, advancing quickly
to meet Durand’s wife. “How welcome you are, I won’t undertake--all at
once--to say!”

Louise met his smile with a suspicion of reserve. “You’ve been away
a long time,” he added, more seriously, taking his cue from her own
restraint. Her eyes, he thought, were graver, but her long absence had
left her much the same. He was looking at her rather earnestly, and
she smiled only slightly at his words. “It has been a long time,” she
assented.

“And it must have been a very exciting and very remarkable time,”
Janeway continued, perceiving she was disinclined to bandy formalities.
“Some time I hope to hear a lot about it.”

She had spoken exactly six words to him. Yet the very sound of those
inconsequent words had summoned again the pleasantest moments of his
life. In an instant of self-consciousness he addressed an anecdote to
Gertrude. “I was caught once in the woods in a blinding thunder-storm,”
he said, “with a little girl. We had no shelter, and though I was
uneasy myself, I was trying to comfort her with reassuring words. To
my amazement she looked up at me and said: ‘I’m just tickled to death
’bout thunder an’ lightnin’!’ I’m thinking right now,” he added,
looking at Louise, “that everybody will be just tickled to death to see
you safely back from the wars. Why run?” he asked of Gertrude, who,
with Kennedy, was drawing away.

“My hairdresser is waiting,” professed Gertrude. “I’ll leave the car
here, Louise,” she said to her companion. “You’ll be back for lunch,”
she added.

Janeway, standing by the table as Kennedy and Gertrude withdrew,
pointed to a chair. “Be seated, Mrs. Durand, do.”

Louise sat down on the edge of the chair. She looked very slight in
her veiled toque. Seating himself in turn, Janeway regarded his caller
with benevolent interest, and drew a long breath. “What hasn’t happened
since I saw you last--what water over the world’s dam! And your
brother--have you seen your brother, George? No? He deserted the law
for journalism. Oh, yes, it must be two years ago. And he has been in
Washington all winter, acting as a correspondent. George,” he smiled,
“is a very militant Socialist.”

“I quite lost touch with him,” said Louise, “as I did with every one
for a long time, you know. But I hope to see George soon. Gertrude,”
she added, returning to the more serious affair, “has explained that
she is responsible for my coming to you this morning.” Louise regarded
Janeway doubtfully.

“She has explained. I’m very glad you’ve come. And I’m looking”--he
took up his glasses from the table as if to point his words--“with
simple Fond du Lac curiosity for those French decorations I’ve heard
about.”

“Oh, I don’t wear them often,” she said, as if taken not unpleasantly
by surprise.

“But you ought to,” he returned. “It should be a matter of pride----”

Her manner changed. “I no longer have any pride, Mr. Janeway,” she said
simply, and as if to have it out and over. “My humiliations have been
quite enough to chasten it.” She did not continue, and both paused as
they regarded each other. With a suspicion of resentment in his tone he
asked a question: “Have you deserved them?”

She was too taken aback to make reply, and Janeway did not really wait
for a reply. “The question answers itself,” he continued, “and since
wholly undeserved, they are no proper blow to a reasonable pride for
duties well done. Let’s have a very frank talk--and you tell me freely
whatever is on your mind.”

“To be perfectly frank, then, Mr. Simms notified me some time ago that
my mother’s lawyer would represent me in the court proceedings here.”

“Yes.”

“And perhaps it’s as well to say to you directly what Mr. Simms would
repeat to you from me--since neither he nor my husband make any move
without your sanction.”

He tried to laugh as he entered a sardonic disclaimer. “I’m afraid
you’re under some misapprehension.”

“Not, I think, in that respect,” persisted Louise, yielding nothing.
“And since you know fully the situation, we may dispense with
unnecessary compliments----”

“Oh, please!” Janeway, slightly disconcerted, raised his hand. “Not
so fast, I beg. You must let me say, at least, that I have known
no more--until very lately--than that a suit for divorce had been
brought----”

“--and having a specific message to send to my husband, Gertrude said I
ought to come directly to you with it.”

Janeway tried again to bring a feeble smile to his defense. “You
speak,” he protested, but in his most engagingly quiet manner, “as one
who had come resolved to say certain things, and feels they must be
said--which is all right. But I know we shall understand each other
when the ground is cleared. You have your own counsel, of course--” He
felt it a little cruel to frame the remark so craftily, since he only
hoped she had none; but he wanted to avoid humiliation if she had other
counsel, and justified his reserve by his real feelings.

“I am but just landed from Paris,” she replied. There seemed a note
of woman’s helplessness in the evasion. It pleased him because it
brought her closer, but he continued his probing with professional
thoroughness. “I mean,” he explained in his very bland way, “you have
retained counsel to protect your interests as they arise.”

“I have retained no one and done nothing,” she returned openly.

“You should have an attorney and a careful one,” said Janeway, but she
cut him off from saying more.

“I can say all that I have to say now, to you,” she maintained,
determined to speak. “I don’t care what Mr. Durand does with my money.
It was put very foolishly under his control by my mother, and I have no
desire to fight with him over that--unless he persists in this action.
But if he drags me into a divorce court to defend charges against
myself, I will fight for my money, as well as against any decree for
him.”

Janeway appeared to reflect. “He has already dragged you, as you
express it, into a divorce court,” he remarked, thinking.

But Louise’s impulse to say all was strong upon her. “It should be
enough that he has enjoyed practically all of my father’s estate,
except George’s share,” she went on, with some emotion. “What have I
done to him? What crime have I been guilty of?”

Janeway, occupied with his thought, spoke abstractedly. “In some
circumstances,” he said drily, “mere decency constitutes a crime.”

“Gertrude cabled me that Robert’s suit for a divorce would be heard
soon, and that I ought to see that my rights were somewhat protected. I
lost a boat at Cherbourg--and everything conspired to delay me. Do you
know when the decree is to be granted?”

His seeming mental torpor persisted; it was only seeming; his head was
in reality busy, but he answered impassively: “To-day.”

She rose to her feet. “He will disgrace me in spite of everything!” she
exclaimed with restraint; only her tone betrayed her feeling. “I _am_
too late!”

“No, no!” objected Janeway, persuading her to be again seated. “Not
too late to take any measures to safeguard your rights or your good
name. Mr. Durand has sued for a decree on the ground of desertion. And
knowing nothing whatever about it”--he emphasized the words slightly
but fittingly--“I supposed that this was agreed upon between you and
him. And that you would not contest a decree on that ground. But you
should know”--he threw another sort of emphasis into these words--“that
you have grounds for securing a decree on a cross bill.”

“I had no objection to a separation; _he_ wished to be free.”

“This decree,” he observed quietly, “should make you both free.”

“But I did not consent to being put in the fight of having neglected
my home and deserted him, as Gertrude tells me the newspaper say,” she
protested, with a touch of bitterness.

“You have been away, you must remember, three years.”

“He asked me to go away.”

“And turned your absence, of course, to his purpose,” he commented
coldly. “However, even that is a slight matter. Should you desire
the record cleared of any such imputation, I will see that it _is_
cleared.” Then he paused, toying with his glasses under his hand, and
seeming to speak after he had weighed something and reached a decision.
“But will you,” he asked at length, “let me be your adviser in the
matter?”

She regarded him, frankly distrustful and somewhat surprised. “I can
scarcely understand,” she remarked quietly, “how the head of my
husband’s legal forces could be my adviser.”

Janeway made an impatient gesture, but spoke placatingly. “One reason,”
he smiled, “is because you need advice; another is that I am no longer
head of your husband’s legal forces; and a third is that, perhaps, I am
as well qualified in the circumstances as another to give it to you.
Lastly, you could have no one to advise you more honestly than I shall
try to do. Do not, Mrs. Durand, oppose this suit. I know the suggestion
displeases you. But, I repeat--and I speak as your friend--let Mr.
Durand, under proper conditions, have his divorce and you have yours.”

“You naturally have his interests very much at heart.”

He squirmed slightly, but spoke again openly. “I realize that I have a
mountain of distrust to overcome. But I shall do it.” He leaned forward
just enough for the emphasis of the words: “It is your interests that I
have very much at heart.”

Wholly unprepared for such a declaration, Louise retired behind a
screen of irony. “And you Mr. Durand’s closest adviser!”

“You are persistingly mistaken,” he returned, his voice showing the
restraint of impatience. “I am not Mr. Durand’s closest adviser. I am
no longer connected in any way with Mr. Durand’s interests. I speak to
you not at all as his friend. I speak as yours.”

It was impossible for her not to realize that some unexplained
feeling lay behind his declaration. She felt bewildered but in some
way less apprehensive. “Then if you _are_ no longer connected with his
interests,” she exclaimed, “surely I can appeal to your mere sense of
justice, of right, of everything, Mr. Janeway, to confirm my claim that
I have done nothing that entitles him to a divorce, or to charge me
with anything disgraceful, such as neglect of my home, and desertion!”

She spoke with deep feeling. For an instant her eyes glistened. “The
only conceivable disgrace,” remarked Janeway, emphasizing the adjective
bitterly, “would be not to desert him. You do not understand the
distinction between desertion in its legal and its moral sense; it is
that which confuses you.”

“It is you, Mr. Janeway, who confuse me. You surely have known me
somewhat. You have been at my home, at my table. You say you speak as a
friend. Yet my husband drags me into a divorce court, and you advise me
not to oppose his detestable charges.”

“It is because I can’t bear to think of your being fettered longer to
this man,” exclaimed Janeway, with contained energy. “Because this
decree can be purged of such charges and made to set you free. And
because,” he added, breaking finally from his long restraint, “I want
to see you free.”




CHAPTER XI

LOUISE GATHERS CATTAILS


Gertrude took Louise to Green Lake to rest and think. And with her
impulsive energy she urged Janeway’s view of what Louise ought to
do. Janeway kept himself quite within the limits of fairness and
professional dignity. He drove over to the lake and called formally at
Gertrude’s cottage, but made no effort to overpersuade Louise. He made,
in fact, no mention of the subject that had come up between them.

Kennedy, who resigned from the corporation staff to follow Janeway’s
fortunes, had been charged with the opening of new offices for Janeway
in Fond du Lac, and with reopening Janeway’s offices in Chicago. He
joined Gertrude and Louise at the cottage for the week-end, tired out;
Judge Harrison and his wife had driven over to spend the day.

Kennedy and Harrison talked over the difficult situation between Durand
and Louise. Harrison said emphatically she must be divorced. Kennedy
told Louise afterward how the Judge felt. He likewise represented to
her, himself, the necessity for some action that should secure to her
the remnants of the estate left by her father. “It’s always feast or
famine in the steel business,” he said half cynically. “Now’s a good
time to pull out. If I weren’t broke I’d pull out, myself.”

It was only after Louise had yielded to the views of her circle of
friends that she perceived how strongly Janeway felt. He had held
strictly aloof from Gertrude’s, going over to the lake for the second
time only when he was sent for, and Louise, sitting with Gertrude, gave
him authority to protect her interests in Durand’s suit. “I only want
now to be free from Robert,” she said, “and as soon as I am, to go
right back to France. There is work there for all of and more than my
strength--here I’m not needed.”

After the return of the two women to Fond du Lac, Janeway called again
to tell what he had done as to engaging counsel. But though the firm
retained were quite competent, Louise’s natural timidity caused her to
shrink from extending her circle of legal acquaintance. She preferred,
under Gertrude’s protecting wing, to seek Janeway for such conferences
as were inevitably necessary, and asked that she be spared discussing
with other lawyers--other men, as she said--her intimate affairs.

On such occasions the personal note was naturally excluded from the
talk. Janeway took cognizance of the precautions with which Louise
hedged herself in bringing Gertrude with her, but gave no indication
that it disturbed him. And he rarely met Louise elsewhere.

One afternoon she drove over to Mrs. Harrison to take her a purse from
Paris. She found only the Judge at home. He was sitting alone on the
west terrace, with a plate of fruit on a table. Louise, standing in the
doorway, called to him: “What are you doing, Uncle Sid?”

Judge Harrison looked around. Louise was a favorite. “Come out, come
out!” he called. “What am I doing? Eating a plum--come try one.” He
drew a chair near to his own. “I’m eating a plum. And one that isn’t
exactly right,” he continued, in his quaint manner, softened by the
slight nasal quality that he let into his tones when quite pleased.

Louise sat down. “What’s the matter with it?”

“Can’t tell exactly what _is_ the matter with it.” He held the plum
gingerly in his fingers, as if analyzing a problem. “But,” he went on,
“it’s _not_ just right. So I keep eating--hoping with every bite it
will get sweeter--and it doesn’t. That plum, Louise,” he added, gazing
with half-closed eyes at the moiety left of the offender, “is like
life; it _isn’t_ exactly to our taste; yet we keep biting at it, and
hoping, and biting--but the blamed thing _doesn’t_ often get sweeter,
does it?”

Louise looked at the wooded hills to the north. “What a beautiful day!”
she exclaimed. “What a beautiful scene! And with nothing to do but sit
here and enjoy it, you ought to be perfectly happy.”

“Most people, Louise, with nothing to do are perfectly unhappy,”
responded Harrison, with the consideration of a father. “I’ll tell you
the real secret of happiness--I’ve searched long for it and found it.
Always have something to do; but don’t always do it.”

As he looked over at her he seemed to recollect himself; her teeth were
so pretty as she laughed. “Now, all this talk about life not being
quite ripe, isn’t for you, Louise,” he said apologetically. “You’re so
young yet.”

“Oh, but it decidedly _is_ for me,” she averred, with an effort at
lightness. “It’s exactly for me. I wonder,” she added, “whether it’s
for everybody? How’s the rheumatism, Uncle Sid?”

“Not very good.”

“Are you doing anything for it?”

“Doing everything. When the final break-up of my old ship comes and
the doctor says do this, or do that, or do the other thing, I’ll have
to say: ‘I’ve done it; there’s absolutely nothing more to do.’ All my
life,” he continued, half grumbling, “I’ve been on the verge of having
health. But at my age I can’t afford to contract any more good habits.
I’ve got too many; I die the victim of them.”

He paused and regarded her with a fond look. His glance included
everything, from her pumps to her hat. “I like to hear you call me
‘Uncle Sid,’” he went on, half musing. “Never call me anything else.
No!” he declared, with just enough of gentle emphasis to point his
thought. “My maunderings are not for you. And I’ll tell you why; the
best of your life is still ahead.”

Louise made a hopeless gesture. “Oh, dear!”

He cut her off. “I mean it,” he insisted, and was about to go on, when
his eyes fell on the doorway behind her. “Ah, Janeway!” he exclaimed.
“Come out--too nice to stay indoors to-day.”

Janeway, nothing loath, ventured forward with a perfunctory apology.

“No interruption at all,” declared Harrison, pointing to a third chair.
“Sit where you can look across the Skokie. I’ve always been fond of the
afternoon sun, Janeway. The west has always had a particular attraction
for me. It was the dream of my youth to lay my bones on the Pacific
slope. Men feel most deeply, not on what they’ve done, but on what
they’ve wanted to do.

“Janeway,” explained the Judge, speaking to Louise, who seemed somewhat
like a quail ready for immediate flight, “is only here for a political
pow-wow. There’s a subcommittee meeting in Chicago to-morrow which I
have asked him to attend, because I couldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t,” corrected Janeway.

“And he could, because he’s going to be there anyway. Well, how do
things look, Henry?”

The Harding-Cox campaign was in full swing. Harrison was responsible
for his State. Janeway answered without hesitation: “It’s all Harding.
He always tells me,” added Janeway, addressing Louise, “I know nothing
about an election. That’s why I’m an authority just now; any political
dub--as the Judge classifies me--can read the signs this time. I
suppose,” he went on, “that to live up to my bad reputation I ought to
predict Cox’s election. But I refuse.”

Louise rose. Harrison protested. “Where’re you going? Sit still.”

Louise did not waver. “Aunt Elizabeth won’t be home for an hour. I’m
going down to the swamp. I told Gertrude I’d bring some cattails home.”

“It’s wet down there,” objected the Judge. “Better get Chris to help
you. He’s in the garden.”

Louise was sure she didn’t need any help. “I only want a few, anyway.”
She started across the lawn. The two men watched her walk away. Her
figure was lithe and her step sure. Her observers eyed her together,
thinking the same thing, but with greatly differing view-points.

“What a shame,” mused Harrison, moved to resentment, “for Bob to throw
over such a woman for Maymie Montgomery! Why, just to get one good look
at that girl”--he nodded toward Louise’s figure disappearing down the
hill--“would stir the pulses of a decent man on his death-bed. And Bob
throws her over for a common rip! It would be interesting,” added the
Judge, ruminating, “to know just what that man thinks of himself.”

“It might be appalling,” commented Janeway, masking the fire in his
heart that Harrison was so unwittingly feeding. “It’s odd,” he went on,
“how our views change. I didn’t use to think so much of good people--I
used to think the bad most interesting. The longer I live, the more
I think of saints--and the less I think of sinners--who, with a few
honorable exceptions, are, after all, a damned busy, troublesome lot to
get on with.”

“I don’t know what’s got into Bob lately,” remarked Harrison. “I don’t
mind a man’s being ugly when he’s crossed. But that man can’t be
good-natured even when he’s having his own way.

“I’m sorry you’re leaving us, Janeway,” he went on, pressing another
thought. “You’ve played the game straight with Bob--though I can’t
allow you much credit for that. No man should be a crook till he’s past
forty--and that reminds me, you’re nearing the danger-line. Until I was
forty I could look any criminal boldly in the face. We’re going to miss
you in nineteen-twenty and twenty-one. The steel business and every
other business has got some big bumps coming to it the next year or
two.”

“You can steer the Durand Companies past them,” said Janeway.

“But I don’t want to,” returned the Judge testily. “My business
is to find other men to do my work; and Simms--well, you and Bob
couldn’t hit it off. The trouble with Bob is,” observed Harrison,
reflecting, “nobody can teach him anything. He’s immensely capable
in manufacturing--but that’s the big end of his capability. I never
was endowed, myself, with any phenomenal amount of intellect, but
I’ve always been just smart enough to learn. Well,” he sighed
philosophically, “as regards you and Bob, I made a mistake somewhere in
my psychology.”

“You’re older than I am,” said Janeway. “You know more about men than
I do. But one impression I’ve long ago fixed in my mind. No man,” he
went on dogmatically, “that has got his head full of women ever liked
me--and none ever will. I’ve tried it out again and again, among men
high and low. It’s a cinch that if a man is chasing a woman he won’t
set great store by me; and that if we cross each other’s paths often
enough”--Janeway was gathering steam as he went on--“we’ll clash!” He
finished with a snap.

“Clashing,” assented Harrison mildly, “is sometimes inevitable. But,”
he continued, relapsing into lazy irony, “we’re counselled to forgive,
Janeway as we hope to be forgiven----”

“True, Judge,” assented Janeway in turn, “true. But as far as my
forgiving Durand is concerned, you must remember God can afford to
take chances on a man long after it would be suicide for a corporation
lawyer to do it.”

Harrison laughed silently. Janeway rose from his chair with the
simulated indifference of a man merely tired of sitting. “Mrs. Durand
may get bogged down there if it’s wet,” he remarked to his companion.
“I’ll hunt Chris up and send him down to get what she wants.”

Harrison eyed him enigmatically as he walked away. In the affairs of
men, as they related to the gentler sex, the Judge usually relied on
Elizabeth for his impressions, and now, something she had recently
hinted recurred to his mind. But Judge Harrison, his flair once
supplied, was no common hound. “I’ll find Chris for you,” he called
after Janeway, with a sudden show of activity--but only to confirm his
nascent suspicion.

Janeway half turned in his steps and raised his hand. “Not at all!
Sit right where you are. If I don’t find him,” he added with brutal
frankness, “I’ll walk down there myself.”

“Take care you don’t fall in yourself,” retorted Harrison darkly.
Janeway started, without even a show of indifference, down the hill.

“What about our conference?” cried the Judge.

Janeway turned again unfeelingly. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

Harrison, ruminating on the curious things of life, watched Janeway
stride away. So far as the Judge could determine, he did not even
make a pretense of hunting up Chris. He was heading for an elm--Judge
Harrison called it the finest in the county--that stood well down
toward the swamp. Harrison saw him pass the rustic seat under it, and
knew he was hunting, not for the gardener, but for Louise.

       *       *       *       *       *

She was standing amid marshy ground, having found a tiny hillock.
Cattails grew in front of her, and in her hand she held one. She was
reaching for another when she heard a voice from behind.

“I came down to help.”

Louise had hardly need to turn to know it was Janeway.

“Thank you,” she said, elevating her tone to one of formal courtesy,
“but I really don’t need any help.” Yet, to her embarrassment, as
she partly turned to say the words, one foot slipped from her island
foothold into the soft marsh.

“You haven’t made much progress,” he remarked, looking at the lone
cattail, as she recovered herself.

“It’s so wet here!” She balanced herself as she spoke.

“Cattails,” he observed unsympathetically, “don’t grow on dry ground.”

“And they’re so hard to get at,” she added, passing over his remark.

“Come this way,” he suggested, pointing; but his suggestions were
always mandatory. “You can get all you want here.”

Louise shrugged her shoulders. “It’s wetter over there,” she objected.

“There’s a log to walk on right down among them.”

She reluctantly prepared to get off her island. Ignoring his extended
hand, except for a mild “thank you,” as she sprang to where he stood,
Louise began to throw out a light smoke-screen of talk--something
unusual for her--so unusual that Janeway, who knew her better than
she realized, remarked it as a symptom of apprehension. As a boy he
had followed gun-shy birds along reedy margins, and knew something of
their flutterings. He led the way, interposing only poised comments to
Louise’s small talk, to where an old tree had fallen into the swamp.

“Do I know this place?” he echoed, in response to a sceptical inquiry,
as they walked on. “Better than I know the law.” He stopped and faced
her. “Would you listen to my first experience in this swamp?”

Louise did not say she would, nor that she could not very well help
herself. She merely stood at attention, with critical eyes bent on the
cattail she held in her hand.

“That’s not at all a good specimen,” observed Janeway, interrupting
himself and putting out his hand as if to take the cattail. She would
not surrender. “What was your experience?” she asked politely.

“I couldn’t have been more than four or five years old,” he said,
pausing beside her. “One Sunday, father and mother went to church and
left me alone. I wandered over and joined the Ross boys. The Ross
boys belonged to a poverty-stricken, gypsy-like family of fishermen,
hunters, and vagabonds generally. But when I could get with the Ross
boys my hunger for adventure was sometimes more than gratified.
Afterward, when I took a sort of leadership among them, they became
known as my Dutch brigade.

“That day I found the younger element of the family--there must have
been a dozen boys and only one girl, Ann--bound for this swamp to get
cattails. To youngsters a swamp is a place of adventure; there are
always snakes here, and there were timber-wolves back of it in those
days, with stories of bears that ate up bad boys. Even then I knew it
was wicked to do things on Sunday--but the Ross gang wanted--as you
do--cattails; we soaked them in kerosene to make torches of.

“I crawled out on an old log, lying like that one, half in the water.
I couldn’t quite reach the cattail I was after, so I caught hold of a
dead branch of the log, to stretch out after the prize. I grasped it.
The branch broke. Down I went, head first, into the water. It couldn’t
have been over a foot deep, but it scared me to death. The brigade
pulled me out, and, to console me, told me there was a big moccasin
snake right where I fell in! Ann wiped away my tears and stopped their
scare stories, but when I got home, very miserable, the wet clothes
had to be explained, and the wickedness of ‘breaking the Sabbath’ was
brought home to me; I don’t mean by whipping; by very sober counsel.
Whether it was from the talk or the fright, I don’t know, but from
that day to this I’ve had a holy horror of seeking adventure Sunday
mornings. And--isn’t it odd--I’ve never been down since to this swamp
after cattails until just now.”

“Then how can you say you know it?”

“Why, I’ve trapped muskrats here, and mink, and all sorts of things,
and shot snipe and dug out woodchucks, and cut fish-poles, and willow
for whistles--” He halted in his steps. “Those cattails look pretty
good,” he said, pointing. “And there’s the log to get them on. They’re
much larger than this one, you see,” he said, taking from her hand the
one Louise had. “What shall we do with this--throw it away?”

“I suppose you might as well.”

“No,” he said suddenly. “Small as it is, it has one merit; you picked
it.” He laid it on the ground, stepped out on the half-submerged log
heading into the water, and put out his hand. “Come on.”

Louise hesitated. “I’m afraid.”

“Oh, no.”

“I might get dizzy.”

“You won’t come to any harm if you do. Give me your hand.”

“Maybe there are snakes.”

“If there are, they’re bound to bite me first.”

He had his way. Step by step, her hand firmly in his, she followed him
down the log to where he placed her on a hummock close to a luxuriant
clump of the rushes. And while she took them one by one from him,
balancing herself gingerly meanwhile, he cut the best of the supply.
And, as if loath to lose it, prolonged the moment by talking, rewarded
if he could coax from Louise brief or one-syllabled responses.

Nor had her instinct of caution deceived her. For never had Janeway
been more contained in manner, more easy in utterance, or surer of his
flow of negligible even if interesting comment.

One arm being comfortably filled with fine specimens, she stopped
him. Taking her hand again, he piloted her, a step at a time, to dry
land, not escaping without sinking a foot more than once into the bog,
himself. Safely ashore, Louise looked at her watch.

“Mercy!” she exclaimed, preparing to move promptly on. “I’d no idea it
was so late.”

“That’s the first remark you’ve volunteered for a long time,” he
observed, picking up the first cattail where he had laid it down.
“You’re particularly quiet this afternoon.”

She professed surprise. He asked to carry the cattails. She objected as
long as she decently could and finally would not give in. But she broke
the fall of her stubbornness with a more lively manner, and, looking
satisfied over her armful, said: “I don’t see how I can ever thank you
for helping me get these. And your shoes are all mud!”

“So are your pumps,” he retorted, looking at her feet. Louise’s feet,
from the very first, had been greatly to his liking. “Young women
shouldn’t hunt cattails in pumps--but they probably always will.”

They were approaching the seat under the elm. Janeway had bided his
time.

“I want to talk to you just for a moment,” he said, pausing. “Will you
sit down?”

She glanced up with deeply innocent eyes. “Oh, I’d love to, but it’s
really too late, Mr. Janeway. I must get home to dress. Gertrude has
guests for dinner to-night--I shall be late as it is. Really, it’s been
awfully good of you to help me----”

“Really, it’s been nothing of the sort,” he said indifferently.
“But----”

“But”--she took the word deliberately out of his mouth--“aside from
little courtesies, you have been more than thoughtful in my big
troubles. I do appreciate it, Mr. Janeway, but I know you’ll let me
hurry home now.”

They were facing each other. Without speaking, he only regarded her
professedly innocent but somewhat troubled eyes. A smile hid itself at
the corners of his mouth--a serious smile--one of patient protest.

“I’ve done very little of anything for you,” he went on, at length.
“Next to nothing--I know that. I only wish it could have been more--”
She tried to interrupt. After the first few words she could not. Paying
no heed to her disclaimers, he spoke quietly but unyieldingly on. It
was his looking at her with such grave eyes that almost compelled her
silence. She stood still. “Perhaps,” he said, “the little I’ve tried
to do will plead now for a _very_ few minutes, even if the soup should
grow cold.”




CHAPTER XII

JANEWAY SPEAKS


She regarded him almost helplessly, but took the chance his words
afforded to force a laugh. “I certainly didn’t mean to be rude--did I
seem so?” she asked, as they walked to the bench.

He turned her subterfuge of words to his own advantage. “You couldn’t
be rude. You might be unduly apprehensive.” Sitting down beside her, he
noted the troubled expression on her face, as she looked up and waited
for him to begin--and felt like a brute at compelling her to listen.

Her eyes now really were innocent--there was no innocence shammed in
them. And they had, with their innocence, that concern, that expression
of helpless fear he had more than once seen in the eyes of women on the
witness-stand, when he took them for cross-examination. That it boded
him no good he knew; but he did not know why.

“Any one else could do this better than I,” he began desperately. He
looked down to collect himself. “I’ve been sort of supervising this
troublesome--I mean troublesome only for you--affair that Mr. Durand
has inflicted on you. You’ve had to come to see me at the office
concerning it. You’ve always brought Gertrude. I approved, though I’d
much rather have seen you alone; and you would have been just as safe
from the intrusion of the slightest personal note into our talks.
But now you will not seriously need to come again to my office for
consultation. Your attorneys know just what to do--all that is over.

“Now that it _is_ over, and that you are on the verge of being free,
and that you say you are going right back to France--I must say
something to you. You’ve always seemed afraid of me--I can’t tell
why----”

She attempted to disclaim. He gave her no chance.

“And that has made me very much afraid of you,” he persisted, as if he
had something to say and must say it.

“Why, Mr. Janeway!” she exclaimed, in an effort to avert the
inevitable, “that’s extraordinary--” But her instinct told her what was
about to break.

“It has made me self-conscious,” he said, with simple frankness, “and
yet”--he looked fairly at her now and spoke without hesitation--“I’m
continually filled with thoughts of you. Every time I see you,” he
said, “I sink deeper. When my thoughts belong to myself and not to
others, I think of nothing else--and no one else. I’ve wished to God a
thousand times I might have met you before all this tragedy came into
your life! But that’s idle. Only the present belongs to us.”

“Could you, do you think,” he asked, very quietly, “care anything
whatever for me--trust me enough to let me try to make you happy?”

All the fluttering, all the nervousness, was gone from her heart. Only
a reality, terrible in its clearness, confronted Louise. She knew he
was looking at her, waiting. She raised her eyes, as if she could not
speak too quickly to relieve his suspense, but before she spoke he read
his answer in them.

“How shall I explain?” she faltered, low and hurriedly. “What woman
might not be proud to listen to what you have just said? But I shall
never marry again. Do not say you have done so little for me; you have
done so much! You have been the very soul of kindness. It is only my
own position I can think of--not yours. Since I first knew you I have
changed greatly; and if I ever had a thought of remarriage--though I
never have--it would be far from me now. It is impossible for me to
remarry while my former husband lives--I am a Catholic.”

How narrowly she watched his face as she spoke, to break the
humiliation she knew would be his--no matter how she put it or what she
said!

He started at her final word. “A Catholic?” he echoed.

“I thought you knew it,” she went on, crushing her handkerchief in her
hand. “Gertrude knows it--I’ve not advertised the fact, but I supposed
our circle were aware.”

He looked at her, completely surprised. “Were you brought up a
Catholic?”

“No, no. I became one in France.”

“But suppose, for a moment, you were not--how should you feel then?”

“Oh, Mr. Janeway! How can I be anything but perfectly honest with
you? Is it quite fair to ask me to suppose what is not? To make me
analyze impressions at best so newly formed--we’ve known each other so
formally, so little----”

“You don’t like me.”

She repressed a quick protest, and unable to bear his scrutiny, now
cold and searching, looked away. “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “I
haven’t the slightest reason to complain. I am sorry--very sorry--I
inflicted this on you.”

He moved as if to rise--at least to give her a chance to rise--but she
did not stir. He watched her face in profile; her lip quivered; then
she turned suddenly toward him. Her eyes were half blinded with tears.
“Do remember,” she pleaded, “I have suffered much.” She seemed groping
for words. “I am so weak when my emotions are stirred.”

“I know you have suffered; God forbid I should add to your suffering;
I nourished hope that I might make it only a bad dream in your life.
We can’t control an indifference to people, any more than we can our
impulsions toward them. Believe me, I have no grievance. I’m only sorry
to have cost you a tear. And you’ve become a Catholic!” he said, half
to himself, half to escape the _impasse_. “How came that? You went
over in the Bishop’s party,” he continued, his mind working fast. “Did
Marion make a Catholic of you?” he demanded resentfully.

“I don’t know that he even knows I am one,” she answered. “He has
been away most of the time since my return. It was France, war, the
suffering, the dying--death. All of that, I know not what more, made
me a Catholic. I saw how those men died--their shell-torn, patient
enduring to the end; it was that, perhaps, that made me what I am.”

She drew a breath as if to take courage. “And here,” she went on, less
tensely, “nobody will understand. I know that. I realized it all then.
I hoped in those dreary days I might die; but I did not. So I’m trying
to walk--as I expected to--alone.”

Her eyes made her only direct appeal to him for something of leniency,
some suspension of harsh judgment.

They rose together and walked slowly, for a time without speaking. He
told her he wanted, at least, some time to hear all--everything about
France, about her _in_ France, as he put it. Then he halted in the
path. “Would you let me ask you just one question? It’s an easy one.”

She returned his gaze calmly. “What is it?”

“Would you let me go and just talk with Bishop Marion about this? You
see,” he added, as she hesitated, “it’s all Greek to me--though nothing
to fuss any one about, nothing to worry about. Only that I might just
speak to him, and hear what he has to say?”

“I can tell you now what he will have to say.”

“Ah, but remember, do, I am a lawyer. I _can’t_ take any evidence
but the best. I know all _you_ would say. I know that marriage is
indissoluble in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Don’t tell me what
_he_ will say--let me go to him--may I just go to him?”

She turned her face to the evening sun. The sky, flecked by tiny white
clouds, held the orb of life suspended in the clearest blue. In the
stillness of the moment she looked at Janeway. Her expression revealed
only her unaffected honesty.

“You are big and fine and strong, Mr. Janeway; I know that. I believe
you are generous. But it is easy for you to ask more than you seem to
ask. My poor head whirls when I try to think so fast. I can’t answer
your question to-day.” She spoke almost pleadingly. “You know how much
it implies. No matter which way I might speak, I should be placed in a
false position.”

His slight laugh confessed his defeat. “Forgive me if I ought not to
have asked it. But what will not a man do when he is fighting for his
life--and you’re all of that to me. I may say, though,” he went on, in
lighter vein, “that no matter how much I’ve ever taxed it, I’ve never
caught that ‘poor’ head of yours napping very much.”

“Do my eyes look as if I’d been crying?” She turned to him for
inspection as simply as a child. The confidence stirred him too deeply.
“It’s not that I care for myself,” she added, “but for both our sakes I
want this kept sacred.”

Her eyes, he confessed, did tell tales. And he decided that a swifter
pace would quiet them. They made a détour to the garden, avoiding
serious things in their talk, and spent some time there.

“Do you know,” he remarked, as they started again for the house, “you
are endowed with one rare faculty? I’ve heard of bankers that could
refuse a man money and send him away satisfied. You refuse a man life
and leave him breathing. But it’s the magic of your presence that holds
me up. When I leave you, it will be like coming out of the ether after
the operation!”

They were at the foot of the steep ascent of the hill. He looked at
her, trying faintly to smile, and doing so, held out his hand for the
cattails. “Let me carry them now. You know the worst; you know you have
nothing more to fear--as I have nothing more to hope. I’ll take the
burden.”

Louise, clinging to her rushes, stood still. Something like a needle
shot through her heart. In that sharp pain she realized the truth; in
that moment she knew that already she loved this man who had called so
strongly to her. She could not help it--something new in her life was
there where only emptiness had been. “No!” She spoke the word clearly.
“You shan’t take the whole burden; take half.” She let him gather a
part of the rushes that lay on her arm. “We will divide it,” she said,
not trusting herself to look up--“each carry our share.”




CHAPTER XIII

JUDGE HARRISON SUSPECTS


When Janeway stood again with Louise before Judge Harrison, the Judge
surveyed them critically. In particular, while Louise threw out a
calculated barrage of abuse for the difficulties of the swamp, the
Judge scrutinized first her feet, then Janeway’s. When the adventurers
took up their story together, his eyes wandered unobtrusively from
Louise’s ruined pumps to Janeway’s shoes, which indicated something
like trench service. Janeway understood perfectly well the suspicions
hidden behind the expressionless gaze of his long-time associate, but
showed no interest in his mental attitude.

“Fell in, didn’t you?” grumbled the Judge, addressing Janeway, while
Louise continued a diversion.

Janeway decided it to be a good time to take all comers firmly in
hand. He set his disreputable shoes well forward and looked at them
approvingly, and then at Louise’s, with all composure. “Not so, Judge,”
he replied, with deliberate emphasis, “I did not fall in.”

“Didn’t fall in, eh?”

Janeway eyed the old man calmly. “I jumped in.”

“Jumped in,” echoed the Judge, in an uncomfortable nasal tone of
bafflement. “I see.”

Janeway hoped he did not see, but could not be sure of it.

“I never in the world could have got such beauties, if Mr. Janeway
hadn’t come to my rescue,” declared Louise, displaying her rushes. But
Judge Harrison had the scent of bigger game; his curiosity had been
roused, and the cattails were irrelevant to the larger issue.

While the three were talking, Mrs. Harrison joined the party. And while
Mrs. Harrison held her in confab, Louise was dismayed to see Gertrude
and Kennedy coming out of the house. “Gertrude!” she exclaimed. “What
are you doing here?”

“What should I be doing anywhere else?” asked Gertrude.

“Haven’t you a dinner on to-night?” demanded Louise. “And haven’t I
been on needles and pins half an hour, for fear I’d be late?” Either
Janeway’s eyes were fixed mildly in reproach on Louise, or she imagined
they were.

Gertrude regarded her with surprise. “To-morrow night, dear, to-morrow
night,” she said gently, and turned to Janeway. “You could have told
her that.”

“How, I?” asked Janeway. “I knew I was invited for to-morrow night, but
I presumed you dine every night.”

“Yes, but to-night I dine out--down-town, with the Child’s Welfare
League--to arrange for our hospital bazaar. And I brought you a
telegram, Louise,” continued Gertrude, fishing in her hand-bag.

Louise read her message. “It’s from Brother George!” she announced.
“He’s on his way from Washington, and will be here to-morrow.”

Judge Harrison sniffed political news from the capital and was content.
Fargo reached Gertrude’s in time for lunch next day. He spent the
afternoon with his sister, and in the evening Judge Harrison and his
wife joined Gertrude’s dinner-party.

Fargo, fresh from Newspaper Row, was full of gossip, and Harrison, as
soon as he decently could, began to quiz him on the campaign. Knowing
that George hated all political parties with impartial candor, Harrison
regarded him as an unprejudiced observer, and was much elated at
hearing that in Fargo’s opinion the West was solidly Republican. “But
the Socialists,” added George, “will poll the biggest vote in their
history.”

“They do that every time they vote,” commented Harrison drily.
“You’re a good authority, George,” he added, “on everything except
Socialism--hm? What do you hear about Governor Cox?”

“Lots of our people will vote the Republican ticket to get even with
the bunch that put Debs in prison,” declared George, with much personal
resentment in his manner.

“And the sad feature of it,” remarked the Judge meditatively, “is that
he ought to have been put in prison.”

“Instead of sending Debs to prison,” retorted George, “they ought to
have sent the whining Allies to prison for obtaining American goods
under false pretenses. They bunked us, Judge. They got our money and
our men and our gush, and now our people have waked up to find their
game was the same old game, played with the same old marked cards
in the same old way. And this man”--George pointed accusingly at
Janeway--“spent his time preaching to us to uphold the law--to obey the
law--and let the thing be put over.”

“What else should you expect me to preach?” asked Janeway, unperturbed.
“You say the laws are bad. You say, make the question of war a
referendum--don’t leave it in the hands of dishonest politicians to
determine. Very well; get your law put on a statute basis and I’ll obey
it. But I’d rather obey bad laws or fool laws than overturn all law.
The farmer that burned his barn to get rid of the rats was an exemplar
of good reasoning compared to your reasoning, George. No matter what
opinion I held of the laws or of the action of the President or of
Congress, it was my business to obey when the laws were put on the
books--and your business.”

“It’s not quite fair, George,” interposed the Judge, “to say Janeway
spent all his time preaching that doctrine. Part of it was spent
keeping you out of jail.”

“George!” exclaimed Louise, aghast. “I never heard anything of
this--put you in jail!”

Janeway disclaimed. “It wasn’t quite as bad as that, Mrs. Durand,”
he said, dismissing the subject mildly. “George annoyed the district
attorneys occasionally when he got mad. But he usually managed to cool
off at the psychological moment.”

“That’s all right,” persisted the Judge. “George is young. He doesn’t
know who pulled the strings. I do.”

“Mr. Janeway certainly kept them off me,” said Fargo. “I ought to be
grateful. I hope I am. But I think I’d respect myself more now if I’d
gone to Leavenworth with the rest of the men that stood for their
principles. There ought never to have been any necessity for pulling
strings,” he added. “And there wouldn’t have been if we’d had a
Congress in Washington to stand up for the right of free speech.

“But I shouldn’t expect too much of Congressmen, I suppose,” he
continued. “As a newspaper man, I’ve had to mix with them. They struck
me mostly as pitiful lawyers, men that have traded, in their so-called
profession, on the contemptible vices of their fellow men; men that
strive to throw a glamour of legality over sharp practice, smirk at
crookedness, incite dishonest litigation, and then blossom out from
their professional dunghills into public life. What, for instance,
is to be expected of men who by a rising vote--so there should be no
record--exempt themselves from a draft that sends their constituents to
the rats and mud and shells and gas of European trenches? And when they
vote taxes, filch candy pennies from the pockets of little children,
in order to exempt their own salaries from income tax?”

“We can’t expect much from Congress, George,” said Janeway
deprecatingly. “We must look to the press for better things,” he added,
winking soberly at Louise.

Fargo laughed cynically. “The press!” he cried. “Untrammelled, free;
palladium of our liberties, tribune of the people! We tried that bunk
out during the war, too. Of course it couldn’t be anything _but_ bunk.
Every time you scratch a newspaper owner, you uncover a millionaire;
nobody else can afford to run a newspaper, and nothing is so cowardly
as a million dollars--except two millions.”

“I see Chicago is having its periodical row over the collection of
the city garbage,” sniffed Judge Harrison. “Why don’t you suggest,
George, that the municipal authorities are overlooking their hand in
not letting that contract to the newspapers? Of course, I don’t mean
_your_ paper--I mean the papers that specialize in the daily collection
of crime and social filth--the moral garbage. Their organization is
so complete--so far-reaching--that practically none of it escapes
them. Why not take advantage of such efficiency? Why not enlist this
intelligent and highly trained agency, that might be put at the city’s
disposal? Such an organization, it seems to me, could include the
household refuse in their programme with slight additional expense, and
thus collect the domestic and social garbage together.”

“You needn’t exclude my paper, Judge,” retorted Fargo. “We take second
place to none in circulation and enterprise; in fact, we aim to lead.
But to appreciate our moderation, Judge, you ought to see, not the
stuff that we print but the stuff we keep out.”




CHAPTER XIV

GERTRUDE ASTONISHED


On a June morning, with a blue sky and a northeast wind rippling
the lake sunshine, the platform of the Lakeshore railway-station at
Fond du Lac presents at train time an active scene. Fond du Lac is
rather too far removed from Chicago to be a suburb, or to attract
the year-in-and-out commuter; yet many Chicago business men make it
and its vicinity their home for a good part of the year. It gives to
the Board of Trade man, the La Salle Street man, the merchant of the
larger class, and to the professional city man, a country life that
complements admirably the short business hours of an exacting city
day. About Fond du Lac they may have their country estates on one of
the small lakes, or on the river, or on the bluffs of Lake Michigan
itself, with many miles of restful country roads and lanes for riding
and driving. At Fond du Lac they have their yacht-club and their
golf-clubs; and their hothouse offspring have at least a counterfeit
presentment of what real country life means to real boys and girls.

When the time for the fast morning trains to the city approaches,
clean-shaven business men, erect in figure and alert in
manner--regardless of how jaded they may really feel--gather on the
lake-front platform to go to the city. They chat in groups, or stand
singly, reading their papers or smoking, or both; those indisposed to
talk or read walk briskly up and down, drinking in the tonic air, and
pausing at times to look across and launch their schemes for continued
achievement over the blue waters and golden horizon of Lake Michigan,
or to watch lazy wavelets crawling in the morning sun up the sandy
beach below the tracks.

There is but one further type of business man to be added to those in
such a scene, and of these there are rarely more than two or three.
They are thin of figure; usually the hair above the ears is fringed
with gray. If there be a mustache it, too, shows the coming of gray.
These men are less absorbed in thought and are not always reading.
Their eyes are usually cast on the pavement as they walk, and they
are quick to look up and solicit, as it were, deferentially, a nod of
recognition or a word from the more successful. Their dress is neat,
but it is the neatness of clothes well cared for, and a hat saved over
from a last season. In a word, these are men whose hold on the life of
success all about them has slipped, whose ventures have just failed of
fruition, and who have had to “come down,” as the Irish say, in their
circumstances and their hopes. They are always on hand at a funeral, or
ready to call in kindly fashion on a successful man who has broken in
health. In such catastrophes they experience a consolation, and serve
thus as a minor link in the social chain. Nor are they ever wholly
ignored by the men of action and achievement who have long known them.

Awaiting the train on such a morning are also to be seen highly
groomed, smartly tailored and hatted women, young for the most part,
and possessed--at least apparently--of unlimited health and strength,
city bound for a day’s shopping. With that art that conceals art, their
costumes reflect only simplicity, but examined, their appointments are
quite in keeping with those of women that have earned for Americans
the reputation of being the best-dressed women in the world; if there
be any strain on the purse of the provider, none is apparent in the
appearance of the provided.

Every fashionable suburb of Chicago and the super-prosperous tributary
towns outside the suburb zone reflect such railway-station scenes
at almost any time of the year; for neither business as conducted
in Chicago, nor shopping, as stimulated by fertile State Street
brains, allow extended vacations to men of affairs or to women
of society--fashion is as exacting as the pursuit of riches--or,
more exactly, the pursuit of providing funds to keep up with one’s
neighbors. But few such places could surpass in ensemble the equal of a
June morning-train scene at the up-town railway-station of Fond du Lac.

Janeway was pacing this station platform alone on such a morning when
Gertrude Durand’s car stopped near him, just as a Chicago train drew
in. Kennedy, Gertrude, and Louise alighted from the motor. Janeway was
in time to give both Gertrude and her guest his hand. The four walked
directly to the train, which made no stops between Fond du Lac and
Chicago, and was rapidly filling. In the parlor-cars they could find
no seats together, and they retreated to the day coaches. The first
one they entered was new, apparently just from the shops, and carrying
that clean freshness of the painter and the decorator that makes a
railroad-car attractive with the fragrance of new plush and hard
varnish.

Janeway led the way into the coach. He paused before two empty seats.
Louise, behind him, sat down next the window. Gertrude passed to the
seat ahead and Kennedy followed her. Janeway stood in the aisle before
Louise. “Is your brother on the train?”

“He went down last night.”

“Then let me sit here,” he said, indicating the seat beside her.

She half smiled at her situation, but said: “Do.”

They talked of George. He had found newspaper work exacting, Louise
told Janeway, but he liked it. The conversation presently halted. Then
Louise turned from the window to Janeway, who knew how to hold his
peace as well as how to talk. “I never knew, while I was away, what
trouble George’s radicalism got him into with the government. And
nothing, of course, of all you did to get him out of it.”

“It wasn’t so much getting him out of it as keeping him out of it,”
said Janeway. “George is naturally pugnacious, and it’s hard for him to
keep still when it’s absolutely necessary to do so.”

“It makes me the more indebted to you. I was going to call at your
Chicago office this morning----”

“Don’t make me sorry I met you.”

“--to thank you and”--she was searching in her hand-bag--“to give you
this.”

With the words Louise handed him a cheque she had written out that
morning. “You have been advising me,” she said, looking at him gravely,
“and I haven’t given you any retainer. I asked Gertrude about it,”
she went on, speaking rapidly, and as if a little fussed in carrying
through her resolve, “and she said she thought about a thousand dollars
would be right. Of course, I don’t know--and there are the other
lawyers----”

She paused for breath. Janeway looked gravely at the cheque in his
hand, carefully drawn in one place for one thousand dollars and in the
other for ten dollars. “Don’t worry about the other lawyers,” he said
without a smile. “As long as you keep me in funds I will pacify them.
Of course,” he added, in a matter-of-fact way, “I don’t usually accept
retainers on the cars--I don’t often have a chance to; and in practice
Kennedy handles the cash in our offices. This beats me out of a call
from a highly esteemed client--one whose confidence I trust always to
retain--but I must say that although you don’t owe me anything yet,
it’s bad luck for a lawyer to refuse money. So I’ll accept this as your
trustee.”

Nearing Chicago, Gertrude and Kennedy joined in the conversation.
Janeway asked them all to lunch with him. He suggested a favorite place
of his, a State Street hotel, famous in the history of Chicago, but
one that fashion had long since passed up. Louise pleaded much to do
and a noon-hour appointment for a fitting; she would lunch, when she
could find time, at Field’s. Janeway kept right on. “Why can’t we all
lunch there at your convenience?” He looked at her with his appeal. She
took alarm. Gertrude, not understanding, made light of her objections,
but Janeway, better informed, abandoned his pursuit. It was not part
of his design to harry Louise; rather he wished to proceed only as she
could reconcile herself to his ambition. It was eventually agreed that
if Louise could get through in time, she would join them at the hotel.

       *       *       *       *       *

“What in the world possesses you to come to this place for lunch, Mr.
Janeway?” demanded Gertrude, when she was seated with Kennedy and
Janeway in the large dining-room on the second floor of the hotel.

“Wouldn’t an appetite be a reasonable excuse?” countered Janeway.

“But”--she shrugged her shoulders--“I thought everybody lunched in
Michigan Avenue nowadays.”

“They do,” assented Janeway; “which is why I don’t. It was your uncle
Sidney who gave me this habit. He used to come here when the place had
a real landlord, and, knowing him, the Judge always kept it up. But
think a minute. Where else could you find a dining-room like this?” He
paused as Gertrude scrutinized the high ceiling, the amazing Victorian
chandelier, and the horses frescoed in centrepiece. “It’s never hot in
this room--it couldn’t be with a thirty-foot ceiling--though I really
don’t know how high it is. But this hotel was built before money-making
had been reduced to such an exact science. The rooms are large, the
office large, the parlors wonderfully spacious--no modern hotel
possesses these; ‘space’ means to them only a little more money to be
squeezed out of the patron; so they crowd him in, with just enough room
to turn around.”

Gertrude was looking about her. “That sounds like Uncle Sid,” she
smiled.

“It is Uncle Sid,” agreed Janeway. “So I’ve learned to like this old
place because of its associations. It will never be what it was when
Willis Howe ran it. But the important reason why I come here is,
because I don’t have to talk to anybody. If I go to the club for lunch,
I can’t avoid talking to some one--it may be an important client--when
I want to rest or think. And if I go to a fashionable hotel, I’m shown
to a grill in the cellar, where you can cut the smoke with a knife, or
into a glaring dining-room filled with young blades, and small tables
and society folk, not to mention cloak-and-suit salesmen entertaining
feminine buyers. And I never can tell the society women from the other
kind--they all look alike to me. The tables are set so close together,
and with such a mathematical eye to dividends, that you have to wriggle
your way between them like an eel to a seat. Your neighbors are
rubbing your elbows or scraping your back; you must either listen to
their talk or talk louder than they do, plus drowning the continual
clatter of the music and the dishes. Worst of all, you are served by a
nervous, high-strung Austrian, posing, poor fellow, as a Swiss, whose
mind is so obsessed concerning his prospective tip that it makes you
nervous yourself. As Jim puts it--there’s nothing to it.”

“Especially,” interposed Jim, “to a man with a small income.”

“Now, here,” continued Janeway, “see--the dining-room is well filled,
yet you’re well apart from everybody. The colored waiters don’t hurry;
a darky never hurries; they only pretend to hurry. It’s a pleasure to
watch their bluff. In fact, everything here caters to a lazy man.

“Besides, everybody here knows me. Robert, at the door, takes my hat
with the deferential greeting of a well-mannered colored servant. He
hands me my paper from his table and tells me it’s warm or cold or nice
weather or stormy--really, half the time I shouldn’t know anything
about the weather except for Robert. He never insults me by offering
me an identification check for my hat and coat. Somebody stole one of
my overcoats from him once. When I asked questions I learned Robert
himself would have to pay--so I told him not to worry. Nobody should
worry here.

“But they know me. The head waiter always wants to know where _I_ would
like to sit--not where he can stick me. He never puts me too close to a
window in winter, nor too far from one in summer. The darky that waits
on me tells me what is particularly good that day. The steward opens my
oysters himself, or sees it done. I know his name; he knows mine; he
has saved his money and is worth a hundred thousand dollars in Chicago
real estate. You do the ordering, Jim.”

Kennedy was due in court at two o’clock. Janeway held Gertrude back
even after he left the dining-room, talking of indifferent things,
before releasing her to return to Field’s. With her at his side he
walked in a leisurely way through the parlors to the elevators, and
made her sit down with him. On the wall opposite them hung a painting
by Gustave Bethune. It bore the title “Matinée Musicale.” A group of
young women--five--were pictured in hats, veils, and wraps, seated at
the matinée, the painter’s view-point so chosen that the five faces
showed in three-quarter profile; Gertrude presently remarked on the
excellence of the picture.

“I’m glad you like it,” said Janeway. “I often rest here a few moments
to enjoy it. And knowing how innocent I am of design in what I do, you
wouldn’t suspect I had a purpose in placing you here. But I wanted you
to see that beautiful thing,” he continued, “and tell you a story.
Study for a minute the second face from the right. Does it look like
any one you know?”

Gertrude could not say that it did.

“Sometimes, frequently, indeed, resemblances are lost on us until
pointed out,” said Janeway, “particularly if we have no vital interest
in the thing resembled. The reason why I sit here, Gertrude, as I
often do of late, and study that group of lovely young Frenchwomen,
is because the one I have indicated--the one that stands out most to
me--looks like Louise!”

Gertrude drew herself slowly up; she drew a corresponding breath,
tinctured with amazement, and, with her lips closed, turned to Janeway.
He sat low and relaxed on the ample divan, his gaze bent calmly on
the face preserved by the art of a master. There was nothing revealed
in his manner. It was one of complete indifference to Gertrude’s
complete surprise; he seemed rather busy with his thoughts. There
was no embarrassment, no smile, no levity reflected in his face or
bearing--only the most matter-of-fact concentration.

“You’ll think,” he resumed, with Gertrude, flushed and suppressed,
looking at him, but saying what he had to say with entire coolness,
“after my giving you so many reasons why I come to this place that the
secret is out--and that _this_ is the real reason. Yet I was, and am,
perfectly honest in what I said. I did not think of the picture when I
was explaining--yet it is quite possible that this is a subconscious
reason--for, Gertrude, the simple truth is--I love Louise.

“I want you to know it from me, because it’s fitting you should--and
because, if you will give it to me, I shall need your help. I’ve a
rocky road ahead----”

“Does she know it?” burst out Gertrude.

“She does. I’m the one in the dark yet. But I want you to know that my
hands are clean. That’s old-fashioned, I know--but I’m old-fashioned
and can’t seem to be anything else. The three years she was gone this
magician often brought her back to me--she was in his country; and
growing on me was the conviction--born of knowledge of her husband’s
ways, that never again would Louise live with Robert. I knew what _he_
wanted--only to be rid of her. It was impossible for me to think she
could continue to love him; I refused to countenance the idea.

“Then she came back. You know how fast things have followed. I
padlocked my lips, hung myself in chains, that I might not interfere
with her decision as to what she should do. I don’t know her mind, or
how much she divined, but she will bear me out in this--that never by
word or by look, as far as I could control a look, have I tried to
invade her heart; she herself could not say other than that. I sat
here, in those days, with all that locked in my own heart--hoping, only
hoping--no more.

“Then came her decision to permit the divorce. After that I laid my
plans to win as carefully as if my life were at stake--as it is. But
nothing that I planned could I carry out. I used to envy you and Jim,
with everything understood, and both so happy. I couldn’t get up the
courage to speak to her--I was ‘buffaloed.’ A dozen times I tried to
make the opportunity and failed--and felt like a fool in the failing.

“But one day I met her at your uncle’s. She was going down to the swamp
after cattails----”

“That day!” exclaimed Gertrude.

“That day,” echoed Janeway, unperturbed. “I looked at her,” he
continued, “as she told her uncle what she was going to do. I wanted to
go with her. She would not let me. But as she walked away from us, I
said to myself: ‘Louise, before you come back, you shall hear and know
everything.’ And she did.”

“What did she say?” asked Gertrude, struggling with her excitement.

Janeway did not speak at once. He was gazing at the face in the
picture. “She said,” he answered, “there was nothing doing. Since
that day, more than once I have sat here, before this presentment of
her--sat here in this sordid atmosphere of depraved men and debased
women--you know what they are--the kind that haunt these public
places--and thought of _this_ woman. I know men and women. I have
studied her every minute I’ve been in her presence--lain awake thinking
of just what she said and just how she said it.

“And I want such a woman as she is. I want her,” he said, “just to
stretch out her hand to me!”




CHAPTER XV

LOUISE SPEAKS


Too astonished at the unexpected confidence to collect her thought into
coherent phrases, Gertrude sat silent.

“I ask you,” Janeway went on, “for a sympathetic attitude, in so far
as I may seem to deserve it. I’ve just the feeling that Louise knows
me much less than I know her, that’s all. And my difficulties may come
through the merest misapprehensions on her part, misapprehensions I
could correct if I knew them. The trouble is, she might never confide
them to me. But you or Jim might correct them merely by challenging
them. I bring no false pretenses to my effort to win her--What is it?”
Gertrude had started and was looking responsively at him.

“I did challenge one,” she answered fast and impulsively. “She said
Bob told her, almost when you first met Louise, that Mrs. Montgomery
was a friend of yours--that you had known her for years, and that you
introduced her to Bob.”

Janeway squirmed like a trapped animal. His face flushed, almost to
Gertrude’s alarm. “That’s outrageous!” he exclaimed, struggling with
his anger.

“I was perfectly sure it wasn’t so.”

“Truth and falsehood mixed in precisely the most poisonous
proportions,” he continued doggedly. “I _have_ known that woman for
years; yet I don’t suppose I’ve exchanged a dozen words with her in
as many years--not even since Bob picked her up. I never knew he was
acquainted with her till he tried to introduce _me_ to her! If Louise
believes that! Perhaps she does,” he said moodily.

“She doesn’t unless she disbelieves me.”

“The human mind is a queer thing; once a doubt is instilled it
sometimes takes a lot of work to eradicate it.”

He fumed in his exasperation all the way down to Field’s, whither he
walked with Gertrude, leaving her at the Washington Street entrance,
and returning thence to his office in Adams Street. The telephone
operator reported that Judge Harrison had called from Fond du Lac and
had asked to be called back; she got a connection shortly, and Janeway
spoke to the Judge on the wire.

“About this strike, Henry,” said Harrison. “The men have gone out.”

“Well, Judge,” returned Janeway, “I’ve ‘gone out,’ myself, thank God.
So there’s nothing up to me.”

Judge Harrison did not give way. “Something’s got to be done,” he said
gravely, “or we may have civil war here in forty-eight hours. Bob is
bringing in detectives and strike-breakers. I’ve got an arbitration
committee, a good one, one that will work, arranged with the men’s
grievance committee. But it calls for Marion. The men won’t accept a
committee without him, and he refuses to act. This isn’t your funeral,
Henry, but as a favor to me--perhaps to avert bloodshed as well--I want
_you_ to urge the Bishop to accept the chairmanship of this committee.”

“And have Bob Durand double-cross me again?” interposed Janeway grimly.

“There will be nothing whatever of that, Henry. This responsibility is
mine. The only reason I drag you in is because you can do more than
any one else with Bishop Marion--you are probably the only man in all
the circumstances that can persuade him it’s his duty to act. And that
if he acts it will be effective. I’ve been up all night with the men’s
committee. I know their minds----”

“What about Durand? What will he do?”

Judge Harrison’s teeth clicked over the wire. That click was a familiar
sound to Janeway. “Damn him!” snorted the Judge. “He’ll do as I tell
him, or I’ll quit him cold. I’m not going to see our plants blown up
again or turned into a shambles for forty Bobs. He’ll listen to reason,
or I’ll break him. I’ve done everything I can. If you’ll do what you
can--as a civic duty--and urge the Bishop to put aside personal feeling
and do what _he_ can, we shall avoid what Lee used to call ‘useless
effusion of blood.’

“But it’s really past a joke, Henry. There never was a time in Fond
du Lac when men needed more to keep their heads--and work hard to get
other men to keep their heads--as much as now. Will you decide? Or
will you think it over and call me soon?”

“If I can get an appointment,” answered Janeway, greatly to Judge
Harrison’s surprise, “I’ll see the Bishop to-night.”

“That is very kind, Henry; though hardly less than I expected. Anyway,
get an early train and see me first.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Janeway called that night on Bishop Marion at his residence at eight
o’clock. He laid Harrison’s plea before him, coupling with it his own
view of the matter, namely, that for the Bishop it was a call to public
duty. Bishop Marion’s objections were gradually reduced to one. “Mr.
Durand will never agree to an arbitration board with me for chairman.”

Janeway leaned forward in his chair. “I am authorized, Bishop, to say
to you that Mr. Durand _will_ agree to you. Judge Harrison represents
a powerful minority interest in the corporation; Durand dare not break
with him; and he pledges himself to bring his nephew into line.”

“In that case,” said Bishop Marion, “it will be a duty to contribute
any service I can to the adjustment of this quarrel; and you may so
inform those at interest, Mr. Janeway.”

They were seated up-stairs in the Bishop’s library, which was likewise
his office and den; a wood-fire in the grate relieved the chill of the
evening.

Both men were smoking. Janeway looked around at the cases of books.
“You have a large library, Bishop.”

“Bishops, like lawyers, are condemned--when not inclined--to much
reading. You yourself have been a wide reader, I am told.”

“Who told you?”

“Well, Judge Harrison, for one; Mr. Simms, too.”

“By the way, is Simms a Roman Catholic?”

“In the sense that he was baptized one. I’m afraid,” added the Bishop,
with a patient smile, “Mr. Simms now falls more nearly into the
category of roaming Catholics.”

“Having been baptized one makes him a member, I suppose?”

“Having been baptized fixes his status for all time.”

“Does it make as much difference as that?”

“It certainly makes a vital difference.”

“With any one?”

“With any one.”

“Man or woman?”

“With any human being; but we don’t use the word ‘member’ precisely as
you, in your churches, use and understand it.”

“Why do you say ‘my churches’?”

“I speak to you as one coming in youth, at least, from any one of
several churches.”

Janeway led the talk, quite in a natural way, back to the well-laden
shelves. “Baptism,” he echoed irrelevantly. “What have you over there?”
he asked, indicating certain precise rows of rather formidable-looking
volumes.

“Chiefly moral theology.”

Janeway mused a moment, or seemed to, for he was not precisely as
somnolent-minded as he appeared. “They must in some sort resemble the
tomes that excited Matthew Arnold’s interest in the British Museum.”

“You remember, then, his comment.”

“Some one has told me--or I’ve read--that your Church has paid
particular attention to that science. It’s a large subject.”

“It embraces a vast range of what you lawyers call ‘case law,’ and what
our critics reproach us with as casuistry--though casuistry is nothing
more than cases of conscience that have cropped up for centuries, and
will continue to crop up until the end of time. You know how your court
decisions pile up into whole libraries every year.”

“Moral theology covers the relations of the sexes, doesn’t it?”

“All of that and much more.”

“Everything that can be, should be coded.”

The Bishop pointed to another row of books. “There, as it happens, is a
quite new codification of the canon law of the Church.”

Janeway asked questions. He learned that the volumes were only recently
off the press, and was told how long and at whose instance the
committee charged with the task had been at work. “Take the question
of marriage,” instanced the Bishop. “Material changes, affecting
the status of marriage in this country, have been newly set forth in
accordance with late papal decrees, such as the _Ne Temere_.”

Janeway had finally reached, almost without effort, the one question to
which he had been leading his unsuspecting host. He rose and, crossing
the room, stood before the formal tomes that held in their voluminous
depths the answer to everything that life seemed now to hold for him,
and his mind worked as he studied their appearance.

“I’m curious to make some acquaintance with an ecclesiastical code,”
he remarked impassively. “Which of these volumes bears on marriage? I
wonder,” he added, while the Bishop opened the bookcase doors, “if you
would lend me one.”

“Unless you are fresh in your classics,” assented the Bishop, laying a
volume in his hand, “you might find these difficult; they are in Latin,
you see.”

Janeway scanned the pages open before him with disappointment. “That
would undeniably be a difficulty,” he said. “Why are they in Latin? Are
there no translations?”

“When you reflect that the Church is universal, you will realize the
necessity of a statute language, a supreme-court language, that will
answer anywhere in the world, to men of every tongue. And as a lawyer,
you will appreciate the undeniable advantage of using as a medium for
official pronouncements a dead language, because in a dead language the
meaning of words remains fixed; it never changes. And if you knew what
grievous blows Christianity has suffered because Christians could not
or would not agree upon the precise meaning of words, you would say:
stick to the unchanging.

“But there are translations. Possibly this entire code is not
translated into English; parts of it are; digests are variously made
into the vernacular, covering portions most needed for reference. I’ll
see--if you are interested----”

Janeway eyed the Bishop calmly. “I am interested,” he echoed.

“I will look up what I can find for you on marriage. It is, I suppose,”
said the Bishop, with method now on his own part, “for a bachelor
purely an academic question?”

“Not purely,” replied Janeway. “And even then, you know,” he added,
half smiling, “an academic question may change, at the slightest
provocation, into a burning one.”

       *       *       *       *       *

He went back to his apartment, filled with only one idea, namely, that
he must see Louise as soon as possible. But how to do it. Attentions
that might lead any one to suspect his feelings toward her would, he
felt sure, not now, at any rate, please her.

He spent wakeful hours trying to figure out how he should manage. But
a false impression had been fixed in her mind and must be corrected
at once. The slightest feeling of distrust on her part would void all
effort on his, and Gertrude had, he felt sure, given him the clew to
one, and perhaps the only cause Louise had for distrusting him.

He did not go to Chicago next day. He decided to play golf, and going
out at about eleven o’clock, with only a favorite caddy to talk to when
he wanted to talk, he spent his working hours at the club, settling,
meantime, his mind to telephone Louise and ask to call.

To his secret delight Gertrude, while he was lunching, walked past
the door of the club dining-room with Louise herself. He tried to get
them for luncheon, but they had lunched. “If you won’t lunch, will you
invite me to go ’round with you?” he asked, without much hesitation.

“Louise will,” volunteered Gertrude. “I’m going to take a lesson before
I start.”

“Why, Gertrude!” protested her companion. “You never said a word about
a lesson! You dragged me out here to walk around with you.”

“Yes, but I must have a lesson first, and meantime you can play nine
holes with Mr. Janeway.”

Louise would not play. She had not had a club in her hand for three
years, and had no idea of playing. Janeway obligingly took the matter
of finding the professional for Gertrude out of the hands of an
attendant. He saw the man himself and arranged with him for the longest
golf lesson on record. Louise protested she would not keep Janeway
from playing, and that she would sit and watch the lesson. Janeway
asked no more than permission to rest awhile after the morning round.
Gertrude looked at him maliciously, and suggested he needed exercise
after eating. But Janeway declared he could be as stubborn as other
people, and told them bluntly they should not so easily be rid of him.
He excused himself only long enough to call up Kennedy at the Fond du
Lac office and tell him to come out and play a round with Gertrude.

“You said you were going to be gone all day,” objected Kennedy.

“I may be back earlier than I thought. Anyway,” said Janeway, in a tone
that Kennedy never questioned, “never mind the office--come out.”

He rejoined Louise and the two watched the lesson. Gertrude complained
presently that a gallery made her nervous, and asked hers to retire.

“I’ve been wanting very much to have a talk with you,” said Janeway,
walking with Louise back to the club-house terrace. “For once in my
life I’ve been too honest.”

“How so?”

“In saying you need make no more trips to the office I’ve cut off all
opportunity of seeing you without leaving it to chance, or getting
leave to call on you. And as I know you don’t want to see me, I’m
reduced to chance alone. But I wouldn’t have had you come to the office
one time more than necessary--for I know how unpleasant that necessity
has been--if I had to wait a year to see you.”

“It isn’t quite right to say I don’t want to see you--as if that were
not pleasant. It’s only that I don’t want to talk about what isn’t
possible--and what, I am sure, would be a sad mistake if it were
possible,” said Louise gravely. They sat down at a terrace refreshment
table well apart from other tables. “Let us be good friends,” she urged
quietly, “and put all else aside.”

Janeway squirmed. His head and shoulders swayed slowly from side to
side as he gradually filled his capacious chest with breath. His head
settled back proudly, while his stubborn face presented a perfect
picture of defiance of the court.

It was almost all lost on Louise. She had fixed her eyes on the
golf-course. If perhaps a little of Janeway’s attitude was reflected in
the penumbra of her vision, she was the less prepared for his immediate
assent.

“To be able to claim a friendship with you would be an asset in any
man’s life,” he said. “I would rather be such a friend--if I might
only _be_ with you--than the husband of any other woman,” he continued
calmly; though had Louise known him better she would have remarked that
his voice changed oddly as he spoke, and most judges in Fond du Lac
could have told her that this meant more was coming. “However, even
friendship,” he went on, as disinterestedly as a professional adviser,
“to be a friendship, must be free from doubts and misapprehensions.
Let a friendship between a man and a woman be based, I should say, on
understanding and confidence.”

She turned to look at him, perplexed but resolved. “I perhaps ought to
say to you,” she returned, “just what I feel.” Her eyes were frank and
clear, but they were also cold.

He met the challenge evenly. “There is no other way,” he remarked, “to
reach any sort of friendship.”

Louise was beginning to have an uncomfortable impression that in her
effort to let him down easy she was holding out her own hands for his
persuasive gyves. Her instinct already warned her that this man would
lead her again into forbidden places.

“I’ve no faith in men,” she said abruptly, and with her eyes, still
quite unafraid, on his.

“I haven’t much, myself,” he assented. “Of course,” he added, “what
you say isn’t really true, as would be easy to prove to you. But,” he
continued, with tantalizing reassurance, “I know what you mean; indeed,
I have very little myself.

“But that we may be friends”--the word sounded now almost ominous to
Louise--“that we may be friends, let misapprehensions be done with.
There is no good reason I know of why you shouldn’t have the faith of a
friend in me. I said to Gertrude only the other day I felt that somehow
I knew you much better than you knew me. It’s natural it should be so.
Your mind is a very open one; you think and speak with singleness of
purpose. I can’t always do that--no man can in dealing with men. I’m
not doing it even now, as you vaguely realize and I well know. But
this much believe of me--whenever I do speak to you, no matter in what
roundabout way I may choose to travel--I’m forbidden, you know, to walk
straight--there is always one underlying motive--consideration for you;
respect, reverence, devotion--whatever you please to call it--the
letters in each case spell only--_you_! So, to resume: I’ve sometimes
thought--more recently--that this very woman who has clouded all our
horizons may have been the cause of some of your distrust of me. Your
husband would, naturally, perhaps, tell you that I knew her. It would
be true; I have known her for years. In a town of this size twenty
years ago every one knew every one else. She was quite bright enough. I
was fond of skating as a young man.”

“I’ve heard you were a champion.”

“Among the blind the one-eyed are kings. She was a very little
girl--possibly ten--and I twenty. She asked me to teach her to skate,
and as I was very vain, I willingly did. Very soon--in a season or
two--she skated better than I skated. I never saw her to speak to
except as a child at the old skating-rink, or as I passed her in the
street afterward. I never exchanged a dozen words with her after she
was fifteen years old. And I never saw or heard of her after she
married, when quite young, a dry-goods merchant, until Durand, with Mr.
and Mrs. Simms, introduced her to me one evening at a Chicago club. I
just wanted you,” he said in conclusion, “to know the facts--I wanted
to clear my skirts of ever having been instrumental in any way in
making her acquainted with any one--him least of all.”

“And now--I am told,” said Louise quietly, “he is to marry her.”

“For God’s sake, let him!” blurted out Janeway. “Cruel and unusual
punishments were invented for cases such as his. Yet,” he added
resignedly, “it seems that by men like him all men are to be judged.
However, no man is willing to be judged--in this case it is equivalent
to being hanged--without a protest. And you know now all that was in my
mind when I said: ‘Don’t oppose this wretched man’s suit; be free.’

“I saw you his wife; he my business associate. But even then I’d have
broken every bond of society, of convention, without a scruple--I’d
have declared myself, pleaded, threatened, fought, and won or lost, had
you been any woman other than you are. I wanted more than once to speak
plainly--you’ve forgotten those days.”

“I’ve not forgotten. Nor have I forgotten that a few moments ago you
were to put all that aside.”

He bowed his head; then he looked at her with droll humor.

“Deacon Tibbetts used to try to impress on us in Sunday-school that we
must forgive our enemies. I practised it faithfully. I found I could
easily forgive my enemies. But they wouldn’t stay forgiven; I never
could get the recipe for keeping them forgiven. One day they’d be
forgiven and the next day they wouldn’t.

“That’s going to be my trouble in being a good friend--part of the time
I’m going to be fine at it. But I shall look to you”--he ventured to
raise penitent eyes as he lowered his voice half a tone--“to remind me
when I slip.”

Her silence, as she looked out on the course, was not reassuring; yet
he pushed doggedly on. “I was only recalling old days,” he urged.
“Surely, memories are not taboo. I remember there was one dangerous
moment one night in your dining-room--that was a beautiful room, by
the way--Durand, and his friends, and this woman--and stories and
drinks----”

“As always----”

“You said something to me--I’ve racked my brains a thousand times
to remember your exact words, but I was too wildly excited at the
confidence to fasten them in my mind--it was about hating it all and
wishing you were away from it. I said: ‘I hate it, too. Let’s get away
from it.’ If you had risen at that moment from your chair--stepped then
with me out of that room--it would all have been over. Instead of that,
you silenced me.”

“You frightened me,” she said, in frigid retort.

“I must have realized it, for some instinct held me back from forcing
words on you. I felt I should lose.”

He saw how, in spite of herself, she was stirred. “You would have
lost,” she said coldly.

He closed one hand. “I knew it. Yet I hoped then--that if you could
ever know me as I wanted to be known, you would learn to like me a
little. But you have no word.”

“I am done with responses--as I am with appeals.”

Janeway took the verdict without resentment.

“You mean,” he replied simply, “you don’t believe me.”

“I did not say that,” she exclaimed petulantly.

“But you meant it.”

“And if I did believe you, it could make no possible difference.”

He spoke the gentlest of protests. “No possible difference? Louise,
if you believed me, it would change this gray sky into a burst of
sunshine--this dead landscape into a place of enchantment--roses would
spring out of these stones--if you believed me!”

He watched her as a fowler might watch a bird struggling in his snare.
She could not bear the strain. “I hope you don’t realize,” she said,
with a quick effort, “how cruel all this is. But, no doubt, you can be
as cruel as other men.”

Janeway hung his head. He clasped one hand tightly in the other. “I’m
afraid I can,” he confessed. “Only, try to remember I’m fighting for my
life.”

“And I,” she returned steadily, “for mine. When my mother lay on
her death-bed Robert Durand asked to marry me. I refused him. He
persisted--as you are persisting. Yet,” she added, as if with sudden
recollection, “why should I couple you in anything with that man?

“He turned my head with his protests--swept me off my feet with his
violence. I wasn’t to consent--I wasn’t to think--I was just to be the
idol of his heart!”

She stopped for strength. “What sport!” she continued, when she could
speak, framing each word with the bitterness of her awakening, “what
sport we poor wretches are for the little holiday of men like Robert
Durand!

“Even then I might have escaped--but while I resisted--and wavered--my
poor mother urged me, begged me for her sake--leaving me, as she was,
alone in the world--to marry him.

“Shall I tell you what my picture of marriage was?” The words, refusing
now to be stilled, poured in a flood from her lips. “It was of walking
in flowers and veil, in the silence of guests and to the strains
of music, up to the altar. That was all I ever knew or pictured of
marriage! You’ve seen something of my enlightenment!” She paused as if
to escape the shackles of a dreaded memory.

“After the armistice,” she went on disconnectedly, “I broke. I went
back to Italy. There I fell ill. I’ve never told you this. I was ill
for a very long time. It was then that nobody heard from me. And I
owe my life to Virginia Hampton, that brave little Southern woman I
served with in France. She nursed me back to life. God knows I didn’t
want to live. It is she alone--not the great doctors, not the great
specialists--who is responsible for my being here now.

“She knew nothing of despair--but she knew how to minister to it. I
knew nothing of religion. Sitting night after night with me when I
couldn’t sleep--when I begged for some drug that would give me a last
sleep--she told me of her Christianity. I was there--in Rome--with its
beginnings under my feet. She gave me courage to live--she taught me
humility in place of rebellion--she taught me her faith. When I went up
to Switzerland--at Geneva--I took it for my own.”

“You’ve taken a faith that I more than once thought must make a strong
appeal to a woman’s heart.”

“What I have done,” she hurried desperately on, “puts behind me all
thought of remarrying. For me remarriage is impossible.”

“I am by no means so sure about that.”

“Because you’re not a Catholic.”

“You haven’t been one very long. I know the great Church is very
strict. All I feel sure of is that her laws are not against reason
nor against justice. All I need to know from you is this: what you,
yourself, would say if you found yourself free. I know now--I realize
it since you have told me all--that you are still weak from your long
illness--for I know you would belittle even that. But only--give me a
chance!”

He could see how difficult it was for her to control herself, how
difficult it was for her as she spoke. “I long ago put aside all
thought of another marriage. But I had once said to myself”--she paused
for strength and words--“once I did think--that the only man I had ever
met that I felt I could respect and like never could really care for me
in the way--a woman--wants to be cared for----”

A single word rose in exclamation to his lips. But it was freighted
with all the hope, all the tenderness, of a waiting heart. “Louise!”

“And now--too late--he comes into my life!”




CHAPTER XVI

AT THE BAZAAR


For the days preceding Gertrude’s bazaar, Louise diverted her mind from
her difficulties by training her energies in with those of Gertrude in
preparation for it. Amazed a little at times at Gertrude’s being so
completely engrossed in the minor difficulties and vexations incident
to such affairs, Louise could only reflect that when we lack real
troubles imaginary ones serve as our retainers.

The grounds of Gertrude’s old home had long been modernized and offered
an excellent setting for a garden bazaar. And the weather, for once,
as Gertrude almost grumbled, smiled on her labors. And her society
friends, for once, as she added, responded to her appeal--the affair
went well.

By the time Kennedy got out late from the city, to put in an early
afternoon appearance, Gertrude’s face was wreathed with smiles. He
found her in the living-room, meeting guests. Of course, he did not
escape without some upbraiding.

“Couldn’t make it any sooner, honey,” he pleaded shamelessly. “Court.
How’s your party?”

“Why, it’s nearly over, Jim.”

“Is Henry Dunning Janeway here?”

“He is. And having a good time. Louise is out there making the poor man
spend all his money. I hope if Bob comes the two won’t clash.”

“Never fear. Simms claims that Bob bearded the lion in his office den
that morning after the riot. If he actually did, I hope Brother won’t
feel the royal beast’s claws in his domestic and financial gizzard
before they’re through.” He scrutinized her rig as he spoke. “Well,
baby girl! Some class to the little gown.”

“Do you like it?”

“Do you wear it?”

“I do.”

“I do.”

Gertrude glanced through the open doors of the terrace out at the
gardens. Her guests circulated among the booths. “Mrs. Montgomery,” she
said incidentally, “hasn’t come yet.”

“What did you invite her for, honey?”

“Bob made me, of course.”

“Dear Brother!”

“I told him it was a public affair, but he was stubborn. I think she
made him ask for a special bid. She’s so sensitive, he says.”

“Mother o’ mine! Why was I not born sensitive? I might have married a
steel magnate myself!”

“When I did invite her,” continued Gertrude, “she said she didn’t know
whether I really wanted her to come or not.”

“She must be a detective,” hinted Kennedy.

“Awfully frank, I thought.”

“It isn’t Maymie’s practice to conceal--much.”

“Jim, I hate _double entendre_.”

“That’s only just plain United States _entendre_. Are you still game,
birdie mine, for going ahead and getting married, no matter what
Brother thinks?”

Gertrude looked at him with Durand determination. “I ordered my
travelling suit to-day; it’s going to be a dear. What _will_ Bob say?”
she sighed.

“What he’ll say would probably put him in jail if it got into the
mails. And by the great Jehovah, there she is, on the terrace with
Brother, right now. Didn’t I tell you, Gertie, she wouldn’t hide
anything you could speak of?”

Mrs. Montgomery, under Durand’s protecting wing, was, in fact, crossing
the terrace toward the living-room.

A painstaking selection of beauty parlors kept Mrs. Montgomery in
condition. She was perhaps just overgroomed, but her confident step
was justified by the lack of noticeable encroachments that three years
had made on her appearance. The family quarrels that had agitated
the Durand circle on her threatened entrance into it, had left her
unscathed by worries; no wrinkles had invaded her pleading eyes; she
asked only for sympathy and forbearance. The worst that could be said
of Maymie Montgomery was that she was happy and wanted everybody else
to be happy, which Kennedy pronounced fair enough; forgetting that
happiness is a joint-stock liability concern, in which neither man
nor woman, neither husband nor wife, neither parent nor child can be
selfish without making somebody, somewhere, pay the price in tears.

“I thought you were never coming!” exclaimed Gertrude, when her
brother and Mrs. Montgomery entered the room.

“Dear girl!” murmured Mrs. Montgomery. “Are you dead?”

“Dead?” echoed Kennedy, as the greetings were exchanged. “Well, I hope
not--yet.”

Mrs. Montgomery wore white. Her figure, with a tendency to plumpness,
was under control, and though her utterances were at times stern, her
voice was pleasant. “I’m so late,” she apologized, with real regret,
“and it’s all the fault of this tyrannical brother of yours.” She was
addressing Gertrude.

“Of _ours_, Mrs. Montgomery,” interposed Kennedy. “You can’t lose me in
this family.”

“See here a minute, Kennedy,” said Durand, stepping away for a side
confab.

Mrs. Montgomery, studying Gertrude’s gown with a critical eye--a
study in which Gertrude, herself, was not at all behind--resumed
complacently: “_Is_n’t Mr. Kennedy ‘inimicable’?”

Kennedy was just near enough to overhear. “What’s that?” he asked,
starting.

Mrs. Montgomery pushed him away with her fan. “Listeners never hear any
good of themselves.” Then to Gertrude. “You’ve had a perfect crush,
Gertrude, haven’t you? I’ve never seen such a stream of cars up and
down the hill. You must have sent out a raft of invitations.”

“Why, I didn’t send out any. It’s public. I couldn’t exclude anybody
from a children’s hospital benefit.”

“Fortunate for me!” purred Mrs. Montgomery.

Gertrude was mildly shocked. “Mrs. Montgomery! I don’t understand!
Would any one in Fond du Lac dream of leaving you out?”

“Dear girl! You know very well my position is a difficult one. But Bob!
You know how he is; he simply _must_ have his own way--don’t blame
me, dear, for all of it. And I hear Louise is very, very sweet. But
when two people can’t live happily together, it’s really a crime to
make them--don’t you think so? Yet I certainly sympathize with her.”
Gertrude was too hot to retort. She felt if she said anything it would
be too much.

Durand, who was talking to Kennedy about the arbitration committee, was
not holding him. Kennedy turned at the last words to Mrs. Montgomery.
“Come right out into the garden, Mrs. Montgomery. We need sympathizers.
Poor Gertrude had yesterday eighty-seven babies to feed--you may go as
far as you like.”

Mrs. Montgomery had an indulgent smile for her prospective
brother-in-law. “Lovely!” she drawled, turning again to Gertrude.

“They had the prettiest things in the booths,” suggested Gertrude
encouragingly, “if they’re not all gone. Run along and I’ll join you in
a minute.”

Mrs. Montgomery walked happily away with Kennedy. “Isn’t Gertrude
dear?” she smiled.

“Just like her brother,” suggested Kennedy blandly. The touch was not
lost on his companion.

“Don’t say mean things,” she objected. “You’re not a bit nice to me.”

“I must be the only man in town that isn’t.”

“There you go again. But I want to tell _you_, Jim Kennedy--and I never
get the chance--that instead of _my_ trying to influence Bob against
Gertrude’s marrying you----”

“I never said you did.”

“I’ve tried to make him give in.”

“Does he do it?”

“Like a mule.”

“You mustn’t call Brother names.”

Maymie tossed her head. “He doesn’t hesitate to call me names; why,
he even had the nerve to tell me if I hadn’t any manners I might copy
some from his wife--wouldn’t that kill you? Maybe he’s getting tired of
Maymie. But I ain’t afraid of him.”

“No more am I,” chimed in Kennedy. “Come on! You and I’ll be pals yet.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Gertrude was talking with her brother. “When did you get back, Bob?”

“Day before yesterday. I haven’t had time to think yet. This infernal
strike----”

“But that’s going to be settled now.”

“Settled!” snapped her brother. “Settled--with that man Marion running
the committee! A fine show _we’ll_ have! My brave uncle is responsible
for shoving that down my throat. He’s got about as much fight in him as
a sparrow. I think Janeway had a hand in it.”

“Bob, why worry about what can’t be helped? Why wear out your health
and strength fighting all the time. My heavens!” Gertrude paused to
let her words sink in. “Haven’t you got money enough, no matter what
happens now? More than you ever dreamed of having? What do you care
whether the strikers get a dollar a day more or not?”

Her brother looked no less saturnine. “I don’t like committees running
my business. I don’t like to be beaten, either. I’ll get even with the
whole bunch yet.”

Durand’s eyes, never quite still, were roving as he spoke; as if
nothing within vision was to be lost. They now fixed on a couple at
some distance on the driveway, below the lotus ponds. Durand recognized
Janeway. This in itself would have annoyed him. But he looked also
at the person standing with the man he regarded as his enemy. Her
back was toward him, and he was trying to make out whether it was a
young girl or a woman talking with the man he detested. Whoever it
was, her figure, very satisfying in its lines, gave him no clew; it
might have belonged either to a young girl or a woman of twenty-five.
While Durand’s eyes were on them, Janeway’s vis-à-vis turned from him,
apparently with some excuse, and tripped up a short flight of steps and
through the pergola, where girls were serving tea.

Janeway, looking after the slight figure until it disappeared, stood
until two bazaar salesgirls, coming up, claimed his attention.

“What’s Janeway doing here?” demanded Durand gruffly of his sister.

“Spending his money, I hope,” retorted Gertrude, undisturbed. “What
should anybody be doing here?”

“I don’t like this idea of Louise’s staying here with you,” said Durand
shortly. “Who’s that going up-stairs?”

Gertrude looked around; she knew her brother’s different tones so well
that she knew when he was interested. And she saw through the open
French doors of the terrace the feminine figure that had arrested
Durand’s attention when his eye had caught Janeway. Gertrude suppressed
a laugh. “What is it?” asked Durand testily. “What’re you laughing at?”

She regarded him as if not quite sure of his good faith. “Don’t you
know your own wife when you see her?”

The figure disappeared on the mezzanine. “Was that Louise?” he demanded.

Gertrude was still laughing. “It certainly was.”

“Some style!” murmured Durand, still looking toward the stairs.

“Hasn’t she?” commented Gertrude maliciously. “Uncle Sid said she was
the best-looking, the best-dressed woman at the Horse Show last week.”

“Paris has given her an air,” he snapped.

“Paris won’t give you an air unless it’s in you to begin with. Louise
always had an air; you never realized it. Her figure is more rounded
and her cheeks are fuller. There she comes again.”

The brother and sister were standing where they could see without being
seen. Louise, purse in hand, was fairly tripping down the hall stairs.
She crossed the terrace quickly and disappeared among the guests.

“Bob, you’ve cast off the best woman that ever came into your life,”
said Gertrude indignantly. She knew her brother’s face and knew how
the change in his wife had taken his breath. Physical feminine beauty
made an appeal to Durand that nothing else in the world could quite
equal, and, like all men of his temperament, he was usually a failure
in choosing women.

“No use talking about that now,” he growled.

“That’s what every man says when he’s ashamed of himself.”

“I’m no parson. Louise knew that when she married me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Her mother knew, anyway.”

“And you’ve lost the best business adviser you ever had. When you were
afraid to spend such an awful sum to rebuild the mills, who made you do
it--and with her money, too!”

“I never said she didn’t have a good head for business.”

Gertrude seemed to welcome the chance to free her mind. “When you were
ready to close down the mills and give up--and I was, too--she made you
hold on. You ought never to have let her go.”

“It’s too late to switch back.”

“It was a _mighty_ bad mistake, Brother.”

Guests approached to say good-by. Durand, greeting them absent-mindedly
as they neared his sister, crossed the terrace and went out into the
gardens. Mrs. Montgomery, deserted by Kennedy, caught sight of him.
Durand joined her, and, making the round of the booths, Mrs. Montgomery
spent liberally--even beyond what Durand liked. He told her so.

His admonition was capriciously taken and Mrs. Montgomery feathered a
barb in return. “Your devoted sister is catty to-day, isn’t she?”

“Well, what the devil did you insist on coming for?” demanded Durand
peevishly.

“Well, why the devil shouldn’t I come and go where I please, Bobbie
dear?”

“You know she doesn’t like you.”

“That’s why I wanted to come.”

“You like a fight, don’t you?”

“No more than Bobbie does, do I?”

“Well, you’ve spent all the money I’ve got. Let’s get out.”

Mrs. Montgomery’s eyes fixed on some one in the pergola. “Oh, there’s
Mr. Janeway!” she exclaimed. “Let’s speak to him!”

Durand’s face grew black. She laughed out loud. But just the same
she did insist on going over to the tea-tables, where Durand, glumly
absorbed in thought, sat while Mrs. Montgomery laughed and chatted with
the chatty attendants and sipped a cup of tea.

The course of true love doesn’t traditionally run smooth. But it may at
least be said that, compared with the course of untrue love, it is the
merest mill-pond.




CHAPTER XVII

JANEWAY INTERVIEWS THE BISHOP


The following week Janeway spent an evening with Bishop Marion. “I’ve
felt some responsibility in unloading this arbitration work on an
overburdened man,” remarked the visitor blandly. “I’ve come to ask how
you’re getting on.”

There was no complaint on the Bishop’s part. His talk drifted from his
difficulties with Simms and the obstacles Simms continually put in the
way of the committee’s investigations, to the strike itself.

Janeway brought up the letter of the American bishops on the duties and
rights of labor and capital. “I was surprised,” he remarked, “to find
it so closely in touch, on a very vital subject, with modern thought.
Democracy, to-day, is as badly abused a word as liberty used to be.
And we’ve heard so much hollow prating about making the world safe for
democracy, that it’s refreshing to find something suggesting a real
democracy instead of a sham autocracy to parade ourselves in. Your
bishops seem to have caught the idea.”

“There is really but one perfect democracy,” said Bishop Marion, “the
democracy of sacrifice. Its effective expression is a collective
expression--just as the word itself is collective. And the most nearly
perfect example of it is in the religious communities of the Church.
It is rather odd that none of our dazzling lights of communistic
thought has ever noticed that practically the only permanently
successful communistic venture is a religious community. I always
hesitate,” continued the Bishop, “when I hear that phrase--‘modern
thought.’”

Janeway manifested impatience. “And yet,” he interrupted, “why
intelligent men--and you represent intelligent men--should shrink from
modern thought is one of the repellent things about your Church.”

Bishop Marion spoke on. “It’s not precisely that we shrink from the
thing itself--we shrink rather from mere unquestioning approval of
it--an approval that seems to connote commendation of a specified line
of thought because it _is_ modern--which is obviously foolish. All
lines of thought, good or bad, were once unimpeachably modern. The
principles you approve, set forth by the bishops, are as old as the
first necessity that ever arose for formulating them. If the thought
you refer to as ‘modern’ agrees with these, so much the better for it;
if it doesn’t, so much the worse for modern thought.

“The appeal that men unwittingly make to ‘modern’ thought always
reminds me that the Church is the very fortress and citadel of
thought, if by thought be meant clear thinking. It is seemingly the
only institution that preserves in this dark age of loose thinking
the art of reasoning. When one nowadays appeals to reason, he appeals
inevitably to Catholic thought; all other schools have apparently
become too lazy to think seriously or well.

“I’ve heard you say, Mr. Janeway, that the reason lawyers fail is
because they don’t work hard enough to get up their cases. If you
ever got up the case against ‘modern’ thought, you’d scourge it out
of court. The very essence of your own success is your devotion to
tireless thinking and close, hard reasoning--yet modern thought abhors
logic, the basis of all reasoning; it is patient neither of history nor
of fact; yet history and fact are the very shield and armor of the good
lawyer.”

Janeway brushed the ashes from his cigar. “That may be the reason why
good lawyers are afraid to quarrel with you,” he suggested.

“I remember my father’s telling me,” continued the Bishop, “of
some negro sailors, mutineers, shipwrecked on our shores, who were
apprehended, tried, and convicted of murder on the high seas. The case
was appealed. John Quincy Adams appeared before the Supreme Court of
the United States to defend the rights of the friendless negroes. You
may imagine it was not a million-dollar case----”

“Don’t take a shot at me, Bishop.”

“My father heard Adams make his argument. It was an occasion. Adams
must have been a very old man then; his eyes bothered him greatly
and he wiped them continually with a handkerchief. Aside from the
technicalities of the case, his plea was on the rights growing out of
the duties of hospitality to the miserable men cast, thus, starving
upon a foreign shore. It was a plea so masterly, as I heard it
described, that it might well have served for all time as a classic on
the obligations of hospitality. Adams had ransacked history for his
precedents, and so marshalled them that he carried the court with him;
his shipwrecked clients were freed. But how many men, as eminent to-day
as Adams was in those days, and in old age, would undertake to get up a
case for naked mariners as Adams got up his case, and to win it on an
appeal to the obligations of hospitality?

“You spoke of the bishops’ letter. The encyclical of Leo XIII on
labor, written a generation ago, is the classical presentation of the
enlightened Christian view on that subject; this letter is based on his
encyclical.”

“Whichever way you put it,” observed Janeway lazily, “I wish your
view-point on other problems were as much in harmony with the modern
view-point--less reactionary, Bishop.”

Both men were smoking peacefully. The discussion was academic. “It’s
odd we should be called reactionary,” replied the Bishop. “It isn’t the
rock that’s reactionary--only the waves that dash against it--the tides
that rise and fall at its feet.”

“Put it as you will,” persisted Janeway, “men and women of to-day--as
of many another day--are enmeshed in the conventions of a current
civilization--it is a condition, Bishop, not a theory, that confronts
men and women”--Janeway was gathering steam--“and if your Church stands
apart from such conventions, shipwreck ensues.”

“Civilization,” commented the Bishop, “is properly only the leisure
moment of Christianity. When the world holds up a mirror to
Christianity, civilization is the image it reflects. If Christianity
be fresh, vigorous, and beautiful, the image will be such. If it be
weak and weary, corrupt in high places, or if, as to-day, its voice is
despised, the image will reflect the evil results.”

“Bishop Marion, are you proud of civilization as we see it in the world
to-day?”

“Are you?”

“No.”

“No. But the root of the trouble is that civilization to-day won’t
listen to Christianity; baptism as a social prophylactic has fallen to
a plane of importance far below that of vaccination. Yet Christianity
offers to a world, distracted as ours is, a trained and world-wide
army of soldiers strengthened by the victories and defeats of twenty
centuries. Its forces have never been possessed of more élan than
to-day--a great trained engine at the command of human nature against
its besetting weaknesses. And all it asks of its recruits is that which
real intelligence always suggests--humility.

“Yet, curiously enough,” continued the Bishop, “we, ourselves, are
blamed for the ills of the day--the war and all else! Few, indeed,
understand us; few fail to condemn us. The modern wits--grasshopper
philosophers like Wells, who jump, with the confidence of a locust,
from ‘_It may have been_’ to ‘_It was_’; our own apostates, like Moore
and Ibañez, mere calumniators--these men lie about us and defame us
with the sangfroid of the Roman wits of eighteen hundred years ago.
Calumny, I suppose, like flattery, should be well laid on. Among the
enemies of God, there’s no such word as honor.”

“It’s the stubbornness of your position,” objected Janeway, “that
excites the opposition. I feel it at times strongly myself,” he said
with emphasis.

“There is inevitably a fundamental difference in your view-point and
mine,” returned Bishop Marion. “You, like most Americans, think in
decades; the Church thinks in centuries.

“Naturally,” he continued, “I hold no brief for any mutilated form of
Christian faith. I defend only that which, being whole, is equal to
meeting every menace that threatens society. Religion is humanity in
account with God. The accounting must be clear and simple. The religion
that can direct this accounting must speak with a definite authority
and be possessed of a delegated power to enforce its mandates.
Christianity, as I know it, and as the world despises it, has lost
none of its early characteristics. It is as vital, as aggressive, as
uncompromising to-day as it was then. It still excites the contempt and
hatred it has always excited--the scorn of the dilettante, the rage of
the brutal, the resentment of the refined. It is sanely intolerant,
profoundly indifferent, supernaturally patient.

“Yet men may find in it to-day all that St. Augustine found in it
fifteen hundred years ago. Nor does ‘modern’ thought offer to-day to
thinking men any more than Augustine tasted and cast from him in the
husks of the Manicheans.”

Janeway was silent for a moment. “I came to you to-night, in reality,”
he said at length, “on anything but an academic errand.” He lighted his
small bomb under the Bishop with perfect poise. “You know enough of me,
I think, to realize that in laying a case with difficult aspects before
you, I should not be anything less than perfectly frank. And in the
solution of its difficulties lies, perhaps, the future happiness of a
woman, and, of a certainty, my own future happiness. I speak of Louise
Durand and myself: and I shall tell you the whole story.

“I came back to Fond du Lac a few years ago, you remember, as
counsellor for the Durand Steel Corporation. Durand often invited me
to his house; I became acquainted with his wife. Almost the first
time I met her I saw the unhappiness of her position, and I realized
as quickly the fine simplicity of her nature. I saw her aversion to
the license of her husband--the fight, practically hopeless, that she
made as he tried to drag her down to the level of his own circle of
disreputable men and women. And watching her intolerable situation,
first with curiosity, then with respect for the way in which she
bore the indignities Durand heaped on her before his low companions,
my admiration deepened into something more. There was nothing to
keep me from telling her all this except--herself. And when I was
resolved--come what would--to free my mind, he had driven her abroad
to clear the way for marrying this Montgomery woman. Can you understand
it all?”

“I know something of it,” replied the Bishop.

“She came back. I told her everything. And when I had wrung from
her the admission that under happier circumstances she might have
listened, I fancied the last obstacle to a new life for both of us
was removed. Imagine my consternation when she told me she had become
a Catholic, and that for her remarriage was impossible. I refused to
believe it. She begged me to wait, in any event, before we should even
discuss remarriage. When I had reduced her objections to the last--her
religion--I asked her, if it stood between us, to give it up--you see,
I am keeping nothing back.”

“Did she consent to this?”

“She refused.”

Bishop Marion drew a breath. “How well you served Satan,” he murmured,
“when you put _that_ temptation before her!”

“Do you blame me for doing what any man with red blood would do to win
the woman he loves?” demanded Janeway, with indignant emphasis. “You
call me a fighter. If a man will fight for money, power, justice, won’t
he fight for his life and what is dearer than life? Shouldn’t you do
it?”

Both men spoke under perfect control; both were practised duellists.
It could only be said that underlying their measured exchanges there
was an element of mutual forbearance, especially on the part of the
Bishop--and a mutual respect. But there was likewise, on the one hand,
the keenness of resolve, and on the other a firmness of principle that
rendered the discussion grave.

Bishop Marion paused an instant before answering Janeway’s importunate
question. “I should not, in any event,” he said carefully, “dwell on
‘red’ blood. Leave that for men like Durand. The red-blood appeal has
been used to justify everything man has ever done to break a woman’s
heart. You and I must meet without surrendering our convictions.”

“We do so meet at this moment,” interposed Janeway firmly. “The civil
decree is about to free her. I must know where she and I stand before
your Church. And I need your help.”

“All the help I can give you I will give.”

“You mean,” commented Janeway, instinctively alert, “there is no relief
for us?”

“I mean,” returned the Bishop, “that I myself do not know until I learn
fully the circumstances surrounding her marriage to Mr. Durand.”

Janeway felt his way forward with care. “That marriage,” he began,
“took place wholly, of course, outside the jurisdiction of your Church.
Neither of the parties were of your communion--never had been. In those
circumstances, Bishop Marion,” he asked slowly, “what would be the
presumption of your Church as to the validity of such a marriage?”

“Marriage,” observed the Bishop, with equal care, “is a natural
contract. In the circumstances you relate the presumption of the Church
would be that the marriage is valid.”

Janeway’s crushing disappointment was well concealed. “Does that mean,”
he asked, engaged with his thoughts, “that the remarriage of the wife
during the life of her former husband would not be recognized by the
Church?”

“Not quite that. You asked what the presumption would be. But
nullifying impediments, diriment impediments, as we call them, that
might invalidate the first marriage, may exist, and such must be
reckoned with. Presumption, I need hardly say, is not proof. You merely
presume a man innocent until proved guilty; our presumption is the same
concerning a natural contract. But bring Mrs. Durand to me; let me
examine into her case and weigh the circumstances.”

“If she comes she will probably come alone,” continued Janeway,
relaxing, but not less serious. “And her sensitiveness is very great.
I am only sorry, so far as the presenting of her cause goes, that it
is not hers alone--I mean, that I had no personal interest in it. No
man can plead his case as well as another can plead it for him. And
my concern in this matter is so vital that it really becomes my own
case when I plead it. But I bespeak, Bishop, for Louise Durand, every
consideration it is in your power to give her.

“You spoke a few moments ago of an American, once a President of the
United States and the son of a President of the United States, a
diplomat of distinction, among the first of our statesmen, and, in
addition to all this, an eminent jurist. You told me of a moving
incident in that man’s extraordinary career; how he thought it no
derogation of his dignity, not too great a tax on his years, to appear
before our most august tribunal to plead the cause of a crew of
friendless, shipwrecked negroes, accused of mutiny on the high seas,
and to urge in their abandoned behalf the hospitality of our shores.

“If this woman, who is very dear to me, comes before you as a
judge, she will come friendless and unknown among those of your
great communion; she will come, not as a criminal, but as a victim,
shipwrecked on the shores of a detestable and corrupt society. I ask
you to remember that she is very new in your Faith. And to weigh in her
behalf the responsibility that hospitality may rightly impose on you
and your Church toward an innocent woman who appeals in misfortune to
its mercy; I ask you to remember John Quincy Adams and his negroes.”

Janeway was taking his leave.

“I shall try,” said the Bishop simply, “to measure up to my
responsibilities. Let Mrs. Durand come, either with you or alone, as
she prefers--and the sooner the better.”

“She is at Turtle Island with Mrs. Harrison just now,” said Janeway.

“When she returns, of course. We shall all,” added Bishop Marion
gravely, but with sympathetic kindliness, “experience anxieties until
we know just where we stand.”




CHAPTER XVIII

DAY-DREAMS


Turtle Island in midsummer combined, so Judge Harrison, who had long
owned it, maintained, the coolness of the lake with the seclusion
of the wilderness, and possessed for its owner yet another prime
attraction--it afforded for him, he said, with a complete change of
air and thought, a unique “access- and inaccess-ibility.” A few hours’
run in the launch--and the Judge’s launch was not considered, by his
younger relatives, fast--was more than enough to cover the distance
from the Fond du Lac pier.

The island, too, was just large enough for a nine-hole golf-course, and
this added, for the Judge, the crowning attraction of the little speck
of green in the wide expanse of blue waters. The golf-course was never,
in Janeway’s estimation, in playable condition, but for the Judge,
who talked golf more than he played, this was not a vital defect. His
summer guests were too courteous to complain of the greens, and these
reached in the end a condition in which, as Kennedy said, there were
none to complain of. But Judge Harrison’s clubs were faithfully carried
to and from Fond du Lac in the launch, and if by any chance they were
forgotten, the boat was peremptorily turned back. This made the family
alert to be sure they were aboard.

Under the dozen Norway pines--and they were good ones--at the north
end of the island stood the Harrison cabin--just a roomy, comfortable
affair of cedar logs, with a living-room running through the middle. At
one end of this room was a rough stone fireplace, and opening on either
side of the living-room were bedrooms. The dining-room was entered
through archways on both sides of the fireplace, and facing south,
overlooked the lake, the beach pleasingly visible not far away.

Mrs. Harrison had taken Louise, of whom she was fond, over to the
island when she went with the servants to open the house for the
summer. Little as Louise could bear to talk to any one of her marriage
experience with Mrs. Harrison’s nephew, the two women came to
confidences before very long, and Mrs. Harrison made it very clear that
she understood and sympathized.

“Sometimes, Auntie, I think the crudest part of it all is that it has
robbed me of faith in all other men,” said Louise one evening, before
the fire. “I have to keep saying to myself: ‘They’re all alike--all
alike!’”

“My dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Harrison, “if you are forcing yourself to
say that, it only shows you haven’t lost faith in men. They _are_ all
alike in this, my child--men are creatures of the flesh; we may as
well resign ourselves to that fact. Don’t expect to find a normal man
without that primal taint in his nature. But they are not all alike;
pray that you may find one with consideration enough to think of you
first; if such a man loves you, you may be sure of happiness with him.
The other kind--the kind that think of their impulse only--you’ve had
experience with, poor girl!”

“But sometimes men are the victims of women, Auntie; what kind are
they?”

“Both kinds. Their impulses make them the easier victims. But the
distinction holds; the one kind deserve our sympathy; the other kind
get what they deserve at some vile creature’s hands.”

They talked late--the younger woman beset by difficulties and
perplexities--the other experienced in the illusions and grounded
in the realities of life; and Louise went to sleep steadied and
strengthened in some respects, if still facing the future blindly in
others.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the afternoon following the evening with Bishop Marion, Janeway
left Chicago on the three-o’clock train, joined Judge Harrison at Fond
du Lac, and Oliver, the Judge’s chauffeur, headed the launch for the
island. Mrs. Harrison and Louise were at the little landing pier to
greet the arrivals. If there had been any doubt in the minds of the
Harrisons as to Janeway’s interest in Louise--and her more carefully
measured return of it--there was none after twenty-four hours with
their two guests at the island.

For a lover every situation is an opportunity. A mere elevator man on
duty in a twenty-story building can make love with complete happiness
provided the object of his affections will ride up and down with
him--and she will. It is absolutely necessary, however, that the
interested pair should, in any situation, have some moments apart from
other people. Janeway, after dinner, tried skilfully to draw Louise
from the fire before which Judge Harrison, with his slow-burning cigar,
had planted himself. But she resisted every appealing hint. Janeway
was forced to cease repining and to resign himself to cards indoors,
with only the consolation of eying Louise, next to him, somewhat
unscrupulously--to her occasional embarrassment--and saying for her
benefit whatever the situation might inspire.

In the morning, on his way up from the plunge, he was singing before
breakfast. Over the eggs and bacon Mrs. Harrison cautioned him. “I
pay no attention to that wretched saying,” he remarked, frankly
contemptuous of it. “I learned long ago the wisdom of singing before
breakfast. Often it’s the only time of day a man gets a chance to sing.
Weep if you have to; sing when you can.” And with hardly a break he
suggested, addressing Louise: “Let’s go fishing.”

While Louise parried, Judge Harrison, with contempt for fishermen’s
ignorance, growled: “Nothing but perch out there, Janeway.”

Janeway was not disturbed. He disputed the Judge’s dictum, and set up
as an authority on island fishing himself.

With Louise, after a decent resistance won over, Janeway disappeared,
and when in a sport skirt and under a summer hat she appeared on the
porch, Janeway was in the garden with a tin can and a spading fork,
digging angleworms.

Louise laughed. “Do you really want to go fishing?” she asked, as she
joined him.

“No, do you?”

“No.”

“Then come on!” He struck the fork vigorously into the ground, to
desert it then and there. Louise pointed to the tin can. “Those poor
worms!” Janeway, drawing his handkerchief from his pocket to dust his
fingers, kicked the can over, and with Louise took the path through the
woods.

He told her of his talk with the Bishop. Louise, not temperamentally
optimistic, got less encouragement than Janeway got out of it. He was
conscious of her anxiety. “We shan’t get on without a fight--I don’t
expect to,” he declared bluntly. “I never got anything worth while
yet without a fight, so I could hardly hope for all of this world and
part of the next without one.” He looked hard at her, but Louise was
looking, or trying to look, ahead. “Nobody ever handed me anything on
a platter,” he went on grimly. “All the bright boys in my town were
picked up at one time or another and made protégés of by some big man;
no one ever picked me up for a winner; nobody ever seemed to need
brains when mine were for sale. I was just a puny, sallow-faced kid. I
couldn’t do anything that made other boys famous. I hadn’t even good
looks--which are a material asset, even when not backed by brains.”

“But think,” exclaimed Louise, not repressing, for the instant, her
feelings, “what you’ve done in your profession! My! If I were you, I
should be swollen with pride.”

“No--you’d be thinking of the many things you should have done better.
I’ve too often cut down with an axe when I should have thrust with a
rapier. And,” he went on, with unabated interest in his failures, “_I_
never could swim across the river. I never could make the ‘first nine’
in baseball. Even in the ‘Turner School,’ the best I ever could do was
the ‘Knieweller.’”

“What on earth is the ‘Knieweller’?”

“It would be hard to explain without a turning pole; but it was the
easiest of many other ‘wellers’--not nearly so hard as you are.”

“Ah!” She caught her breath with the little exclamation. “Why did you
look to a woman so hard to clear the way to?”

Janeway looked at her. “Think of what’s at the end of the way.”

“Have they agreed on a money settlement yet?”

“It’s all over but the quarrelling. You remember Simms decided, under
proper pressure, to withdraw his original complaint and immediately
substitute an amended complaint, with the objectionable features left
out. After a conference last week it was agreed between your attorneys
and Durand’s that Judge Bellows--the case is before him--should sit
in chambers as an arbitrator to arrive at a final agreement on the
property settlement, the deeds and other securities involved in this to
be placed in escrow and delivered out at the time of signing the final
decree; and that a stipulation of settlement be filed in the divorce
proceedings and the final decree come down. This may sound a little
confusing to you----”

Louise sighed. “It does.”

“But things are arranged with sinister clarity. Just give me a judge
that understands--that’s all I ask.” Janeway paused at a thought.
“Whenever Judge Harrison used to hear me say that he would always take
the chance to grumble: ‘And a jury that doesn’t understand’--which
wasn’t true, but he liked to say so. Anyway, Judge Bellows _does_
understand.”

“How I shrink,” murmured Louise, “from all this divorce disgrace!”

“The disgrace fixes solely on him.”

“And the settlement of all this money on me worries me.”

“The sole reason I’ve insisted on it is because you won’t give me an
answer. Say you’ll be my wife and I’ll drop this settlement matter
instanter.”

“But independently of any answer to you, I am well able to take care of
myself.”

Janeway stopped in the path before her. They had reached the edge of
the woods, and were facing the lake and the beach. “Louise,” he asked,
“am I your legal adviser or am I not?”

She glanced up with just enough of mischief in her eyes to set his
pulses going. “You’re not permanently retained yet. But I haven’t any
other,” she added.

“Then this settlement must go through. It’s the merest
recompense--inadequate compensation.” They walked along the beach
till they found a driftwood log. “I’m finally getting it clear in my
mind, Louise,” Janeway continued, as they sat down, “why that fellow
pursued you so. Putting two and two together--what I’ve heard of his
business affairs from his Uncle Sid and what you’ve told me--he was
cold-bloodedly after your money!”

Louise, looking down, was running the hem of her handkerchief between
her thumb and finger. Without moving her head, she lifted her eyes to
his. “Don’t I get _any_ personal credit?” she asked, in a demure effort
to abate his angry intensity.

He was not to be turned from his resentful indictment. “He needed it
to tide him over the ‘psychological depression’ that culminated in
1913. He was close to the rocks that year, his uncle says; your money
saved him.” Janeway twisted his shoulders in protest. “What a price,”
he exclaimed slowly and savagely, “for a girl to pay for the crime of
inheriting wealth! What a tragedy--my Louise!

“Durand _is_ ingratiating,” Janeway went on, less tensely. “I remember
how genuinely surprised I was the first time he lied to me. One of the
treasured watchwords of my corrupted youth was that no man who was a
liar could succeed in life. A slavish adherence to that maxim nearly
wrecked my early career. First and last, I’ve had to scrap a great
deal of copy-book maxim as far as it refers to success in life--or to
what men agree to call success. Not a few of the great exemplars of
big business that I know are likewise, if occasion demands, extremely
able-bodied liars--Durand’s no worse than the others. _His_ crowning
villainy was that he broke your heart!”

“No!” interposed Louise, disclaiming instantly. “He could humiliate me,
he could torture my feelings--but he couldn’t break my heart. It never
belonged to him. You--be careful of it--will you?”

He looked at her so suddenly it almost took her breath. Then she
laughed at his gravity. “When I do break it--” he said grimly----

“When you do break it,” she echoed, cutting off his words, imitating
his frown and mockingly solemn.

“--let me drink the poison from your hand.”

The moment seemed to bring a care-free happiness. “I can’t promise
that,” she objected. “I might need it myself.” She pointed to the clump
of willow shoots at her hand. “Cut me a switch.”

When he handed it to her she began stripping the leaves from it.
“Whatever _possessed_ you,” she demanded, turning on him a Lilliputian
frown of her own, “to follow a luckless creature like me down that day
to that swamp? What were you _thinking_ of?”

“I wanted to save you from the fate to which you were headlong rushing.”

“Fate?”

“That of marrying a rebuilt hero of France. I didn’t want to see you
tied to a damaged _poilu_.”

“My heavens, would you wish me on a poor _poilu_? Couldn’t you do
better than that for a slightly respectable client? But you shan’t make
fun of the poor _poilus_; they’re too sacred.”

“Well, then, to one of those cigarette-waisted barons that drain
our country of its wealth. Only the other day I had to draw a
marriage-settlement contract for an innocent old candy maker who had
amassed too many millions in Chicago real estate. A third of his
fortune had to go to a puttering Frenchman for marrying his silly
daughter.”

“And she may have been dear at the price!”

“But in your case I was resolved not to see your respected father’s
estate--if you could ever get your hands on it again--go to feed the
flower of a foreign aristocracy--especially”--he coughed slightly to
point his remark--“if there was a chance to salvage any part of it for
a poor but dishonest American.”

He talked to her of himself, as if to put himself as honestly as he
could before her. Something in his confidences, and especially in his
odd voice, always drew her to him; some intonation, some note, some
manner of his saying even little things, broke each time like a rude
wave against the barriers of her scepticism. In spite of herself, she
believed; sincerity seemed to echo from his words--though she knew how
perfectly able he was to conceal his thoughts. “It’s not that I deceive
people,” he had said once to her, in defense, “I only allow them to
deceive themselves; when they wake it’s too late--I’m gone!”

And when he spoke her name as he had only now--from the depths of an
emotion she had never realized could be in a man’s heart--she felt
helpless--almost marvelled at his restraint when alone with her, for
she dreaded how an unguarded moment might have overwhelmed her own.
“Can you wonder,” she managed to say, with an attempt at coldness, as
she spoke again of her husband, “that I have no faith in men?”

“But you still _can_ have faith in a _man_. Point your finger at me and
say: ‘You are the man!’”

“I’d rather not take a dollar from Robert Durand,” she said. “I’ve
suffered so much at his hands, I hate even to think of him. At first
he was so fussy about me, so considerate--and then gradually--think of
having to live through it! The protestations--and the neglect!

“And then”--her voice tightened--“there came a moment when I
knew--really knew--I was no longer first with him. What a moment!
Another woman! And I no longer preferred--just cast off, like a
discarded glove. How I struggled that night with shame and rage!
How little I understood, that night; how little I realized what a
foundation of sand my house of pride had been built on”--she stopped.

“Sometimes,” said Janeway in hard tones, “we are compelled, or
think we are, to cast pearls before swine. It is, of course, trying
business. But occasionally, when all else has failed and the pearls are
definitely discredited, the swine may still be moved by a certificate
from some one whom they are used to regarding as an authority,
attesting the market value of the gems. When Durand finds out I’ve won
you, he’ll burst with rage.”

“But you can’t know,” she exclaimed, as if the brand were still hot on
her heart, “the abasement of that first moment when a woman realizes it
all--you who always, everywhere, come first!”

He checked her with explosive energy. “Don’t say that!”

“It’s true--you always succeed.”

“Don’t say that, Louise!” he exclaimed in protest. “I couldn’t count my
failures.”

“How can you honestly say that?”

“What you count successes have been wrung from men that hated me.
They had no choice but to concede them. They needed me to put through
their schemes. But, Louise--_you_ didn’t need me to make money for
_you_--_you_ didn’t have to like me--it all just came out of your
heart! I can’t understand yet how you could listen to me! I’ve
always thought the finest instinct a woman has is her love for her
offspring--the flesh of her flesh, the bone of her bone. How in the
name of God she can love a man is a little too deep yet for me--no
doubt He understands it.”

“You would understand it,” said Louise, “if you understood our vanity
and weakness. We’re very common clay. Perhaps that’s why you love us.”

“Do you know,” he asked suddenly, “what I count my one success in
life--my only success in life?”

She turned away, unwilling or unable either to respond or to bear his
look--for his answer to his question was already foreshadowed in his
tone and manner--just whipping her foot lightly with the willow. “My
one success,” he repeated, not alone with a lover’s ardor but with a
deeper conviction, “is that I come first with you! Nothing else--I
count nothing else! Oh!” he exclaimed, “if I could have met you ten
years ago--if you could have loved me ten years ago!”

She laughed softly. “Barely sixteen!”

“Yes,” he declared energetically, unabashed. “When you were barely
sixteen! What I could have saved you!”

“I don’t know whether I could have loved anybody then--I was such a
fool! But now I can at least make my way in the world. I can earn my
own living.”

He was gently tolerant. “What a picture you’d make, earning your own
living--you’re so big and strong!”

She held her ground. “I could do it.”

“How, for instance?”

“I could do lots of things--teach.”

Janeway was laughing at her. “Do you think you could possibly find any
one to teach that knows less than you do?”

Louise blazed. “Why, the idea!”

“I mean, less of the world.”

“I could sew.”

“Kimonos? Shirts? Pajamas? Louise!”

“Oh, you needn’t laugh. I could do lots of things.”

He was thinking, as his eyes rested on her, of a remark Harrison, in
speaking of Durand, had once made to him; it was the first time he had
ever heard of Louise. “Bob has a very bright wife,” the Judge had said,
“a California girl. Elizabeth says she’s too thin to be beautiful. But
she makes a hit with me. She’s got more brains than Bob,” the Judge
had, in his staccato fashion, blurted out in conclusion.

As she sat before Janeway now in the morning sun, the thinness
Harrison had criticised had gone, and the interval had given her the
color--sometimes high--denied by earlier years.

“I’ll tell you what you could do,” suggested Janeway. “Write beauty
hints to women for yellow newspapers. If you could only tell women how
to charm merely by doing nothing--the way you do! But you couldn’t do
even that. Charm is incommunicable.

“No; while I live, outside of any question of settlement from Durand,
and whether you marry me or not, you shall never have to earn your
own living. At the least, I can and will be responsible for your
subsistence. There’s no law, human or divine, against my providing for
you.”

“I couldn’t take money from you if I didn’t marry you.”

He closed his hands as he looked at her. “Louise, I’ll get money to you
if I have to break into your room at night like a thief, and slip it
into your purse by stealth. And I’ll bend above you as you sleep, to
steal the fragrance of your breath!”

“Henry!”

“I’ll originate a new burglary; I’ll become an unheard-of criminal for
you. Unlooked-for returns shall come to you, strange dividends reach
you unawares; I’ll be behind every man you turn to for a position;
mysterious salaries shall arise on every hand. But every man you speak
to will fall in love with you----”

“They haven’t yet!”

“--then I’ll strangle each one in turn the way I’d have strangled
Durand one day when he mentioned your name--if Simms hadn’t pushed him
out of the room.

“You earn your living! The only way you could ever work hard enough to
earn it would be in keeping me from providing it.”

“Do you know you’ll break my heart with kindness?”

“If you call that kindness, what’s to come would, as Jim Kennedy
might say, reduce your pulsing muscle to the merest fragment, believe
me. Louise, do you ever think of it--the mark of this world to-day,
whichever way you turn, is unhappiness? Everywhere it’s unhappiness.
Frankly, I want to escape it. I don’t feel I’m responsible for the
present infernal state of things. But I do feel, with a horrible
conviction, that you’re my only way out.”

She was gazing out on the lake. “Don’t forget,” she said, “that
any one capable of great happiness cannot hope to escape great
suffering--they go together. Oh, you’re very patient with my wretched
difficulties. I know I ought to give you an answer.”

“Not till you give me the right one. But, Louise,” he added,
“remember--there is a time for all things. Remember, the time for all
things passes. Perhaps I’ve waited too long for my happiness. But when
I think of you, I say to myself: ‘No. God meant I should wait for her.’
Only--don’t let the cup slip from our lips!”

“How _can_ I ever marry you with this stone wall of divorce between us?”

“We must smash through any wall that parts us. I could make you outface
this cringing, contemptible world; I could force it to your feet. It’s
only your religion--this strange, uncompromising, incomprehensible,
human and unhuman high court of Christianity that keeps you from me.
Louise! Will you sacrifice me for an ideal?”

“It is not an ideal--it’s a faith. If you take it from me--if I lose
it--I lose myself; I am lost.”

“Why did you ever put such a mountain as this Catholic Church between
us? Why?”

“I turned to its hope to escape this world. I knew I was raising an
impassable barrier against remarrying. What had marriage brought me but
humiliation, wretchedness, sorrow, shame!”

“Damn men, anyway!” he exclaimed. “What were they made for?”

“How could I but detest it?” she asked. “How could I foresee such a
moment as this? Forget me! Give me up!”

“Louise, I can’t give you up! You can give up what stands between us.
Join some other church--turn Mohammedan, Hindu, Mormon--I don’t care a
hang what you are. Only, for God’s sake don’t throw _me_ over!”

“And what manner of creature should I be, if I now denied the Truth? I
could never be the woman you hope for--the woman to make you happy, as
you deserve to be. Had I never known this faith, it would be different.
If I abandon it now, I lose, with its hope, even my self-respect. I am
a grovelling apostate--worse than this low pagan I have put out of my
life!”

“Stop, Louise!”

“Give me up. It is hopeless!”

Janeway rose to his feet. “You call it hopeless; be it so. For me it
is not hopeless--nothing is hopeless. I will grapple with this to the
death. I will study your faith till I know it better than you know it.
I will besiege your priests till they run from the sight of me. I’ll
wrestle with them till they gasp for breath! I will grope for every
clew, clutch at every straw; hope, while I live, against hope. I will
_never_ give you up. After you see Marion, I will talk to him till one
of us drops dead. I will go to Rome itself!”

Louise rose in turn. She could not conceal her emotion as she regarded
him. “Surely, if they could hear you now they would find a way.”

“I mean it. I will hear, if I must, from the lips of the Pope himself
what you dread to ask. He himself shall tell me that because you’ve
become a Christian you’ve condemned yourself to death in life, a woman
neither married nor unmarried, a wife and no wife, a victim of the
brutality of man, and a sacrifice on the altar of an all-merciful
Christianity! I’m going to fight single-handed for my right to live, to
breathe, to have my being in the woman I believe God created for me--as
I believe He created me for her. Louise, wish me luck----”

She threw away her switch as she looked straight at him and rose to go.
“I’d wish you, if I could, into heaven!”




CHAPTER XIX

THE ORDEAL LOOMS


That night Louise dreamed--not of the hours of the day she and Janeway
had spent wandering over the island--not of the fragrance of the pine
woods or the odor of reedy margins in their deep recesses--not of those
early moments in which a woman realizes for the first time in her life
that she is deeply, passionately loved by an honest man, and allows
the yearnings of her heart to open it a little to the devotion of a
lover--not of any of these pledges of a happy day after a dreadful
night did she dream, but of trying amid agonizing confusion to catch a
train that every one was hurrying to reach, and for which she seemed
just too late. Janeway, clasping one hand, was urging her with energy
up the platform; but Durand, refusing to release her other hand, was
stubbornly holding her back.

“Did you finally make it?” asked Janeway, when she told him next
morning. Both, by an unspoken but mutual conspiracy, were ready for
breakfast ahead of their hosts.

“Oh, I woke up,” said Louise, “so I don’t know.”

“Well, my name isn’t Joseph,” he said, bending confidentially toward
her over his coffee-cup, and giving an excellent imitation of Judge
Harrison’s softest nasal tone, “but no seer is needed to interpret
_that_ dream--it’s taking candy from the baby. The train you were
trying to catch was Happiness. The pulling and hauling on my part
and Durand’s explains itself. But I suspect a contributing cause to
your painful vision was a poor mattress; there was an awful hole in
mine. Change rooms and beds with me to-night, and you’ll find yourself
falling over a terrible precipice, or headed for the bottom of the
sea, with me trying to bail the boat, and Durand furtively opening the
sea-cocks and making faces at Neptune.

“There’s a bit more, though, to your dream about trying to catch the
Happiness train that everybody was running after. It’s this: You’ve
made certain reservations aboard that train, and in a particular car.
I shouldn’t have been so particular myself, but that’s aside. If any
car would do you, the last would be as good as the first; however,
you’ve put it up to me to get you aboard one particular car--where
accommodations _are_ somewhat limited. And that’s my job.

“Fortunately,” continued Janeway gravely, “the conductor in charge
is well disposed. Naturally he has asked to see your ticket, and we
must show it to him before we can know what our chances are for a
compartment. So--will you see the Bishop alone, or shall I go with you?”

       *       *       *       *       *

They saw him together. In the afternoon Oliver took them over to Fond
du Lac. Janeway made an appointment through Father Smyth, the Bishop’s
secretary, for that evening, and at eight o’clock he called for
Louise. They drove together to the Bishop’s residence.

Bishop Marion lived in a roomy, old-fashioned brick house that stood
in a grimy street not far from the rolling-mills, and in the block
occupied by the procathedral. In an early day the house had been the
home of a well-to-do Fond du Lac family. Deserted by them as the town
grew to the north, the property had been bought for church purposes,
and gradually the whole block had been acquired. The old church used
as a procathedral stood at one end of the block and the Bishop’s house
at the other. Both were now greatly overshadowed by a huge parochial
school which rose between the two, and which, with the exception of
a large hospital that he had sponsored, comprised in its scope and
expense most of the building operations that Bishop Marion had thus far
achieved. When Janeway had reproached him for worshipping in a shabby
church and spending his money on a big school building, the Bishop had
asked him what he should think of a husbandman-farmer who, if forced
to choose, should build a big house in preference to a big barn.
“Moreover,” he had added, “I must set an example for my priests.”

Louise had been in the house but once before; that was some
years earlier, with Gertrude, to arrange for a hospital benefit.
She remembered only its dull, smoky interior and its very bare
reception-room.

Twilight softened the steep, shabby roof angles of the house as their
car stopped before it. The reception-room seemed to Louise’s quick,
nervous glance absolutely unchanged. The woodwork seemingly bore its
original paint--not positively black but sombrely dark. Large folding
doors, now closed, communicated with the chapel on one side, and a
door opened on a rear room, but the height and width and gloom of
these doors added to the depressing effect of the dreadfully ornate
black-marble mantelpiece that stared at Louise as she sat opposite it.

The pictures were hardly less formal than the few pieces of carved
walnut furniture in the room. On one side of the mantel hung a
tolerable oil portrait of Benedict XV, and on the other an excellent
copy on stone of the Richmond portrait of Cardinal Newman. His sweet
dignity seemed, in the shabby gaslight, reassuring even to Louise’s
uneasy eyes. She called Janeway’s attention to this picture, for she
remembered it on her first visit as the most sympathetic feature of the
room.

“I’ve been trying, from the looks of this room, Bishop, to decide
whether you’re a very rich man or a very poor one; you might be
either,” observed Janeway, after the Bishop had entered from the hall.

Bishop Marion laughed. “If debts would make a man rich, I should have
nothing to complain of. Come this way, Mrs. Durand.”

The Bishop led his callers across the hall and ushered them through a
large room fitted as a business office into a smaller room opening into
it from the rear. This was, in effect, a private office. Louise and
Janeway were comfortably seated, and the Bishop, taking the chair at
his table, addressed himself without further prelude to Louise.

“Mr. Janeway has outlined to me something of the difficult situation
in which you find yourselves, Mrs. Durand. And I assume you understand
all he has told me of his wish to marry you?” Louise, not speaking,
inclined her head in assent. “And,” added the Bishop, “that he speaks
for you both?” She nodded again. Bishop Marion perceived the strain
under which she was laboring. “You have become a Catholic,” he
continued. “You have professed, no doubt despite great difficulties,
the Christian faith of the many centuries. I have had no favorable
opportunity to offer you my felicitations on the privilege of having
embraced this faith; and my hope that you will persevere in it.
Converts do not always realize what happens. It is not so much the
neophyte who chooses as it is God who first offers the grace of faith.
Once receiving this gift, we may accept it or reject it; but before we
can choose, God first must give.

“He has chosen you, my child, into His fold, and your will has
corresponded to His great gift. This is why I felicitate you. In all of
the divine economy, nothing to our eyes moves more mysteriously than
grace; and to you, not to another, it has been given.

“And now, I beg you to remember, you are in your Father’s house; and in
the difficulties in which you find yourself because you are there, be
not dismayed; for all that a Father can give you He will give. It is
not always possible for even the most devoted parent to gratify every
wish of his child; but the will and the wish for her greatest good is
always in that parent’s heart--how much more so in the heart of God for
the child of His creation!

“Now I must ask all about your marriage with Mr. Durand. Did you enter
into your marriage with him of your own free will?”

It was still difficult for Louise to speak. She answered simply: “I
did.”

Janeway started. “No!” he interposed quietly, but instantly. “Your
mother--you told me, it was she who made you marry Durand.”

Louise looked at him. “Unhappily,” she said clearly, “I consented.”

The Bishop listened carefully. “Unless you were under duress,” he said,
“no chance lies for us there. You married him in good faith?”

“I did.”

“Had Mr. Durand ever been married before--had he, by any chance, a wife
living at the time of your marriage to him?”

“No, Bishop Marion.” Janeway, his eyes on Louise, sat in a brown study.
“I have never heard a previous marriage mentioned in the family.” But
Janeway held his peace, for on this point he could offer nothing.
Bishop Marion was reflecting. “That gate, too,” he said, “is closed.”

“You never heard even a hint of such a thing?” asked Janeway of Louise.

“I am quite sure,” she returned, “that he was never married before.”

“Tell me,” continued the Bishop, “where were you married to Mr. Durand,
and by whom?”

“Our wedding was at the Church of the Messiah, in San Francisco; we
were married by Doctor Frale.”

“May his bond,” said Janeway between his teeth, “prove as flimsy as his
name!”

“You, of course,” said Bishop Marion, still addressing Louise, “never
had been married before?”

“No, Bishop Marion.”

“Do you know, Mrs. Durand,” continued the Bishop, “whether Mr. Durand
had ever been baptized?”

“He never had been, Bishop Marion.”

“He never had been?” The Bishop leaned forward a little as he echoed
her words. “Are you sure of that?” he asked, scrutinizing her closely.

“His mother told me he never had been.”

“How did she happen to tell you that?”

“In this way: His mother was reared a Catholic. She had given up her
religion when very young. In her last illness, she told me and told
Gertrude, among other things, that Robert and Gertrude had never been
baptized, and she regretted it. That’s why Gertrude calls herself a
‘pagan,’” smiled Louise, looking at Janeway as she spoke.

But Bishop Marion did not join in the smile. “Had you, Mrs. Durand,” he
asked, “ever been baptized?”

“Not until I was baptized in Geneva last year.”

“Are you very sure of that?” he asked searchingly and almost suddenly.
“Never before?”

“Quite sure. I was asked particularly then. My mother was an invalid
after my birth. I was taken care of from infancy by my Aunt Maynie--she
engaged my nurses and chose my governesses. She was living last year in
Vevey, and wrote me about it at the time of my baptism, so I am quite
sure. I have her letter. She is now at home in St. Louis.”

Bishop Marion regarded her with serious eyes. “You feel very sure
then,” he said, measuring his words, “that you can lay before me
satisfactory evidence that neither you nor Mr. Durand had been baptized
at the time you married him?”

Louise replied without hesitation. “Oh, I think so, Bishop Marion.
There should be no serious difficulty about that, I am sure.”

“And I,” interposed Janeway mildly, “ought to be of some assistance in
assembling what you require concerning the facts.”

The Bishop sat a moment wrapped in thought. Janeway only watched him
closely. Conscious of the oppressive hush of the moment, Louise looked
down at the flimsy handkerchief in her gloved hand, clasped it more
tightly, and waited for what should follow.

She could not know precisely what a moment in her life had just been
reached; how delicately the chances for her present happiness were
now being weighed in the scales of twenty centuries by the tired man
before her; she was only conscious of a feeling that she loved Janeway
deeply, a hope that she might yet be the means of his happiness. Only a
woman is capable of such a hope.

“You lay a peculiar complication before me; not a new one--a very old
one,” said the Bishop, still thoughtful. “You wish to know, my child,
whether you are free to marry again. And you ask this as a Christian
woman--one that has embraced the Catholic faith with intent to follow
its teachings?”

“Yes, Bishop Marion.”

“Are you prepared to abide by what it shall decide?”

Louise moved in her chair. “How can I do otherwise?”

“Mr. Janeway has pleaded with you to give up that faith if it should
raise a barrier between you; and you have refused to do so?”

His bluntness frightened her, yet something in his voice gave
reassurance. She looked gravely at Janeway. “He understands,” was all
she said.

“And you, Mr. Janeway, ask whether this woman is free in her faith to
marry you?”

“Just that,” said Janeway coldly.

“Are you a Christian?”

“I am not.”

“You told me once,” observed the Bishop, surprised, “that you had been
baptized?”

“Quite true, Bishop, I have been; but I make no pretensions.”

“And are you willing, Mr. Janeway, in your turn, to abide by what my
findings in Mrs. Durand’s case may be?”

“I am not!”

The instant smoothness of Janeway’s refusal disconcerted for a moment
even the Bishop. But he was quickly equal to a rejoinder. “Does that
mean,” he asked, turning his collected faculties on Janeway, “that if I
find no relief for her, you will continue to press upon her your suit;
continue to urge her to deny her faith to grant it? Surely, this is not
fair. You are an eminent lawyer. You have a perfect comprehension of
what law means. Yet you appeal to a court, and in the same breath say
frankly you will not abide by its decision--even when you must know,”
he added, in reproach, “that the court is only too anxious to find for
you, if it can be found, the relief you seek.”

Janeway met the statement with entire poise. “Bishop Marion,” he said
gravely, “you have no need to ask in what esteem I hold you, but this
is a question that bites into my very life. Your faith you would
maintain with your last breath, defend at your life’s cost. Know, then,
what this question means that you have put so lightly to me. This woman
is my faith; she is my religion. I remember nothing of how she came
into my life; I only know that at the price of it I would cheerfully
seek her happiness.”

“Would you seek her happiness,” asked the Bishop in like tone, “before
your own?”

Janeway showed emphasis. “My happiness could only be hers!” he
exclaimed. “But somehow, somewhere,” he added intensely, “there is
relief for us. And if you decide against us I will go for our relief to
Rome itself.”

A faint smile on the Bishop’s face seemed sympathetic, but he pressed
his visitor without relenting. “And beyond Rome?” he asked.

Janeway responded without hesitation. “It would rest with God--and
Louise!”

As Janeway spoke Louise’s name, Bishop Marion turned his grave eyes on
her. “In the circumstances you lay before me,” he said, “we can move
only a step at a time. And the first step will seem harsh.” He appeared
to speak as if in warning and in appeal to both. “But it is the great
step,” he added, “and with _it_ taken, the path, I hope, will be much
clearer.” He turned to Louise. “My child, this step is yours to take.”

“What is it to be?”

“You must ask Mr. Durand whether he will consent to live again with you
as his wife, in peace, and will promise in good faith not to interfere
with you in any way in the practice of your religion.” Janeway started
violently. Louise regarded the Bishop with open amazement. Indeed, she
could hardly collect herself to echo the Bishop’s words. “Ask him,” she
exclaimed, “whether he will consent to live again with _me_, as his
wife! Why, we are divorced!”

“True,” returned the Bishop, “but that should, in point of fact, make
the trial even safer than if you were not.”

Her horror at the proposal was reflected in her expression. “That,”
she said, almost choking, “I could never, never do!”

“I warned you,” repeated the Bishop calmly, “that it would seem harsh.”

Louise appeared desperate. “I could give up my life before I could do
that!”

“Such a proposal is intolerable, Bishop Marion,” interposed Janeway
energetically. “Intolerable even to think of.”

“Let us all keep our heads,” remarked the Bishop admonishingly.

Louise looked hopeless. “I could not live,” she exclaimed, “for another
hour under the same roof with that man!”

Bishop Marion held firm, but appealed for coolness.

“We tread on very thin ice, my children,” he said gently. “Let us weigh
carefully our words.”

He saw how Louise was cut to the heart. “Our words!” she exclaimed.
“Yes! But their meaning! Who but I can weigh that? You two, the kindest
of men, are yet men. I, God help me, am a woman--I alone can weigh
their meaning!”

“I am not asking you to live with Mr. Durand,” said the Bishop
guardedly. “I bid you only to ask him whether, under certain rigorous
conditions to be imposed, he will consent to live with you.”

It was a moment before the tortured woman could speak. When she did
speak, it was under better control of her feelings, but with no less
horror of the Bishop’s request.

“I need no discrimination,” she said more collectedly, “to make me
realize what such a step means. Ask me anything, Bishop Marion, but
that; ask me to drag myself on my knees in shame before him; ask me to
forget that I have a heart; ask me never again to look into the face of
any man. Don’t force me to go again to him!”

“Calm yourself, dear Mrs. Durand,” said the Bishop. “No one--I least of
all--will force you to do anything.”

Janeway thundered his feeling into words. “No one,” he exclaimed,
“shall force you, Louise.”

“Then let us think of it no more,” she said instantly.

“My dear child,” interposed the Bishop, “this interpellation must be
made. It is not optional; it is necessary. I have no authority to
dispense you from it. And without it, you leave me powerless in any way
to help you.”

“Then I say,” declared Janeway and speaking to Louise, “if you can’t
bear that message to him, I can. I,” he said ominously, “will talk to
Durand.”

Louise grasped eagerly at the straw. She appealed to the Bishop. “Could
he act _for_ me?”

The older man, thinking, looked at Janeway. “The bearer of that
message,” he said in measured tones, “will have need of very great
self-control. The least rashness might lead to the death of the very
hopes you seek by the step to kindle.”

“What do you mean, Bishop?” asked Louise.

“You know how acutely revengeful Mr. Durand is. He feels more bitterly
toward you,” the Bishop looked at Janeway, “than toward any man
living--unless,” he added with a faint smile, “it be toward me. Suppose
Mr. Durand should gain, through Mr. Janeway’s coming from you,” he went
on, speaking to Louise, “an inkling of your mutual hopes--and--from a
motive of revenge--agree to all that is demanded by you?”

“We should be ruined!” exclaimed Louise, looking toward Janeway.

“But such a motive,” burst out Janeway, indignantly, “would invalidate
his consent!”

“Yet how can we catch and label any man’s motive? We should be left
in doubt. I myself would interpellate him for you; but anything I
might say would arouse feelings quite as violent on his part toward
all of us. I should, in all likelihood, be accused of conniving--and,
to act, I must have his unclouded decision. May I tell you how I
feel?” The Bishop, looking first at Louise, then at Janeway, addressed
himself to both. “I feel that if we can secure an honest expression
from Mr. Durand, you, Mrs. Durand, have nothing whatever to fear from
interpellating him. I see what suffering the idea has caused you,”
he said in kindly manner, to Louise, “but I really believe you are
torturing yourself unnecessarily. Mr. Durand’s characteristics are
such, his habits of life are so flagrantly open and notorious, that a
Christian wife--any decent wife--would be an incubus on him.”

“Then,” demanded Janeway impatiently, “why, if these facts are patent
to the public, to the court itself, require this hard interpellation to
be made? Why not dispense with it and grant this injured woman relief
out of hand?” he asked with vehemence.

“I should have more trouble in explaining to another than to an
experienced legal mind that this step has long since been found by
the Church necessary to protect the rights of all the parties at
interest--the pagan spouse, the Christian spouse, and the third party
who would enter into marriage with the latter. I need hardly tell
you that when, for reasons founded on an experience in human affairs
extending over many centuries, a law has been enacted precisely to
avoid misunderstandings and deceits, its provisions are not lightly
to be waived. This is not to say they may not be waived; if such an
interpellation, for example, were impossible, an Apostolic dispensation
from it could be obtained. All I want you to realize is that my
power is a delegated, not a plenary one; that we must move first to
establish, then to protect the rights of this innocent woman, and that
this must be done under the seasoned laws of the Church to which she
has appealed. I will leave nothing undone to shelter her within its
mercies--the Church will never reject the child that has sought its
sanctuary.

“Not,” he added clearly, “that it can always give to every one that
pleads all he may plead for; but that it will give, to the uttermost
farthing, all it may lawfully bestow on those who seek, as this
injured woman has sought, its protection. Yet that certain forms of
law must, in every code, be gone through with, I need hardly remind
you, Mr. Janeway. The form that confronts us is one: Mrs. Durand
must make this interpellation I have described; or we--you, I should
say--must go to Rome and submit to the inevitable delays that follow an
appeal to a supreme tribunal. Is it wise? Is it necessary? Is it not
better, for your mutual relief, to comply with this requirement of the
only law that I myself can administer?”

Seriously as the Bishop had spoken, Janeway had followed and had
already digested every word of the speaker’s thought; when the Bishop
finished he made only a further suggestion: “How about Gertrude?” he
asked tentatively of Louise. “She might put these questions to Durand.”

Louise reflected. It was evident that she, too, had considered and
was weighing every phase of the situation. “Gertrude’s relations with
her brother are already strained to the snapping point over me,” she
replied at length. “I can’t ask it of her. No,” she said hesitatingly,
but as if reaching a hard decision, “there is no one to do this
terrible thing for me. I alone--I, myself--must act. But when--where to
see and speak to him?”

“If ’twere done, ’twere well ’twere done quickly,” observed Janeway,
with immediate grimness. “The suspense is deadly. If she must
interpellate this man as the first step toward freedom, let it be done
at the earliest possible moment. All I ask is, not that I be present
at their interview, but that I be in whatever place it is arranged.”

“He is in New York now,” said Louise, looking from one to the other of
the two men. Bishop Marion and Janeway went into discussion concerning
time and place. It was the Bishop’s suggestion that was finally adopted.

“I think,” said he, “that all can be conveniently and appropriately
arranged here, in this house. Mr. Simms knows that the Arbitration
Committee meets here next Monday evening to receive the signatures
of the company and the men to the new agreement. Mr. Durand must be
here in person to sign for the company. The men demand it, and Judge
Harrison and Simms have agreed he shall be here. The house is large;
you can have ample privacy. Isn’t that the best? Indeed, I urge it for
reasons of my own--reasons I cannot explain now, but which you would
approve could I discuss them, and which, I hope, you will one day fully
understand. Shall we say, then, next Monday night, here; and that you
both come to my private entrance door in Lake Street at seven-thirty
o’clock?”

Even Janeway was taken a little aback at the businesslike promptness
with which the Bishop wished the ordeal and the crisis--which meant
so much in the two lives before him--faced. He looked toward Louise
as if to ask whether she felt equal to what was being arranged. The
expression of her face, as she looked down at the hand-bag she was
toying with in her lap, reflected her distress. “Louise?” Janeway
called her name tenderly. “I’m afraid,” he added, as she looked at him,
“you can’t do it.”

All the reserve of courage in her being was manifest in her expression
and in her words. “I must do it.” She rose as she spoke. Janeway and
the Bishop rose with her. “I will go down into this valley. I will go
alone before this--Moloch!” Her eyes, as they moved from one to the
other of the men before her, were in themselves a moving appeal. “Only,
pray for me, both of you,” she said steadily, “that I do not go in
vain.”




CHAPTER XX

DISQUIETING NEWS


“I’ve been practising in a new court,” said Janeway to Judge Harrison
on the following afternoon. The Harrisons had returned from the island,
and the two men were sitting on the Judge’s terrace.

Harrison looked sceptically at his companion. “What court is new to
you?”

“An ecclesiastical court.” The Judge’s face showed he was still in the
dark. “I suppose you know,” continued Janeway, without the slightest
prelude, “or suspect, anyway--that I am in love with Louise Durand.”
As a matter of conventional courtesy, Janeway waited for any comment
the Judge might make on a subject that must always be considered a
delicate confidence. It was not that Janeway expected a comment. He
did not; his surmise that none would be forthcoming was correct--Judge
Harrison’s face was non-committal. Janeway, however, knew that mask
perfectly well; and knew pretty well most of the time what was going on
behind it. He accordingly continued his disclosure without hesitation
or embarrassment. “You know she has become a Catholic,” he went on,
“and that makes the present question of her remarriage an extremely
difficult one. I have appealed--or we have--to Bishop Marion, and as
I represent the plaintiff, and _am_ the plaintiff, in the case, I am
considerably exercised over the outcome. You don’t seem in a hurry to
wish me happiness.”

Judge Harrison roused himself. “Nevertheless, I do wish you happiness,
Janeway. You deserve it. It’s the elusiveness of the thing I am
thinking of. What company, for instance, would undertake to insure
happiness in this life? Yet we are everywhere confronted with the
spectacle of those about us attempting individually that which
transcends even corporate recklessness. So--so,” he mused, in the
German fashion. “You and Louise, eh? Well, it wasn’t very hard to see
that over at the island the other day. Elizabeth seems to approve, so
it would do no good for me to withhold my consent. You know what I
think of Louise; she’s fine; as fine as they make ’em. In the Catholic
end of it you’re up against a pretty stiff proposition.”

“Fairly stiff.”

“Can you make the grade?”

Janeway drew himself back, after his manner when facing a problem. “I
wish I knew,” he said. “Always before I have had enough detachment,
even in the greatest difficulties, to keep from worrying; not so, this
time.”

“My advice to people that worry is not to worry,” said Harrison
magisterially. “My advice to people that don’t worry is to worry. At
Catalina once I met a man on a glass-bottom boat-trip, a stationmaster
for the Erie Road at 23d Street. He was a Jew--the first I ever ran
across working for a railroad--they know better--though I’ve met more
than one that owned a railroad. He was a veteran in the service and
knew Harriman, Mrs. Harriman, Roosevelt--everybody prominent in New
York. He was worrying for fear he should lose his job. I told him he
ought to be in no danger, and advised him not to worry. He looked at me
with all the worldly wisdom of his race in his anxious eyes. ‘Mister,’
he said impetuously, ‘that’s all right; you mean well. But, let me tell
you--in New York the men that don’t worry are sitting in the park.’

“After that I saw the wisdom of advising men that don’t worry, to
worry. It’s not possible, I suppose, I can help you--briefing, or
anything?” suggested Judge Harrison in softly nasal irony.

“You _can_ help a little,” returned Janeway, somewhat to the other
man’s surprise. “I’m anxious,” he continued, “to have Durand at Bishop
Marion’s house promptly next Monday night at eight o’clock. He’s to be
there, you know, to sign the new wage agreement; for another reason,
which I need not go into, I hope to see him there on time. You can
help by impressing on him the importance of closing with the men at
the Bishop’s house next Monday evening, without fail.” Janeway threw
emphasis into his words.

“Conspiracy,” muttered the Judge, chewing calmly his unlighted cigar.

“A new rôle,” retorted Janeway, “for you.”

“I’ll undertake to have Robert there,” acquiesced Harrison, quite
matter-of-factly, “only stipulating that personal violence on the part
of the ecclesiastical court be barred. What are you trying to do--write
a new chapter in the canonical jurisprudence of the Roman Catholic
Church?”

“I don’t know,” replied Janeway vaguely, “precisely _what_ I’m trying
to do--beyond getting Durand at Bishop Marion’s residence next Monday
evening at eight o’clock.”

“I’ll begin wiring to-night,” said Harrison. “I think by Monday we can
produce him.”

“Meantime,” remarked Janeway precatorily, “keep the confidence, please;
not even Elizabeth, Judge.”

“Not even Elizabeth. And you,” admonished the Judge, “don’t torture
yourself anticipating the worst. I’ve spent my life in jumping at
conclusions, and most of them have been wrong.”

“You have never failed me in a crisis,” said Janeway simply. “Your
friendship and mine is an unclouded one of long standing. I prize it
the more because experience has forced me to the conclusion--as it did
Shakespeare--that most friendship is feigning.”

“Friendship,” observed the Judge meditatively, “is a community of
interests.”

“Or,” suggested Janeway, “a community of tastes?”

“Whatever it _is_,” responded Harrison, “it _ought_ to be a community
of principles. Well”--he spoke philosophically--“some one has said,
pray as if everything depended on God; act as if everything depended
on yourself. Go into the thing to win, Janeway. If the wind gets too
high, make for shore in good season. I went out once with an old
fisherman in Nantucket. Elizabeth was along. The Sound began to ruffle
up. The fisherman wanted to head for home. Elizabeth didn’t want to go
in, but he was set very seriously on getting ashore. She urged him to
stick it out; quoted a line from the old song, ‘Is not God upon the
water, just the same as on the land?’

“‘He is, ma’am, He is,’ responded the old salt, with one eye on
Elizabeth and the other on his telltale. ‘I’m free to admit He is. But
with the wind settin’ in that particular quarter, ma’am, ’tain’t so
much with me a question of where _He_ is as where _I_ am.’”

The Judge continued in gently nasal tones to give Janeway the benefit
of his reflections. “I don’t know much about Catholics myself.
Elizabeth considers them--taken by and large,” explained the Judge
apologetically, “somewhat smelly. But I tell her that will all be
remedied when they ‘Gather with the saints at the ri-ver--That flows by
the throne of God.’”

Janeway seemed too absorbed to respond. “The only thing I have against
them,” Judge Harrison continued calmly, “is that their priests are
mostly a--a--queer-looking lot. What?”

This suggestion drew from Janeway the desired rise. He responded in
judicial appraisement of the Judge’s observation.

“I used to think so myself! I thought precisely the same thing,” he
concurred, with emphasis, “and they _are_--a good many of them--a
homely lot. But,” he asked flatly, “what can you do? Did Christ hunt
up Apollos when he was looking for apostles? Fishermen are not usually
handsome men. Peter wouldn’t get very far in a beauty show. And
certainly Paul wasn’t drafted by the Lord because of his manly beauty.

“No,” he went on, with gathering conviction. “I’ve come to the
conclusion it’s a bad sign for any religion when its favorite leaders,
its clergymen and preachers, are handsome men--men notable for fine,
strong features, good physique, and rich, persuasive voices. Such a
state of affairs is a result, not a cause. It is due to the fact that
a sect has nothing stronger than the personality of attractive men to
kindle the interest of its adherents. The cynics grin when a handsome
preacher makes a hit; and in this instance the grin has a basis of
justification. Compare the picture of the dilettante, delicate-handed,
snowy-banded priest held up to scorn by Tennyson, with the common,
imperfect, knock-about, rough-and-ready men of the wide-spread Catholic
priesthood--dressed in shabby wear; queer-looking, if you like--fat,
squatty, angular, thin, just as they come; always comprehensible,
usually dependable, no frills, nothing esoteric, just plain, every-day,
cold-in-the-head servants of the Most High God. God help the religion
whose heroes need to be handsome men!”

Janeway did not see Louise until Thursday. She was in Chicago that
morning with Gertrude. Gertrude called Janeway up from Field’s to
lunch with them. He found he could not, but clung to the telephone
conversation, and at length, by agreeing to send Kennedy as a
substitute, got Louise on the wire, and, under the plea of having
something important to say, got her to promise, if Gertrude would
accompany her, to come over a moment to his office. The two women took
a car down-stairs and drove to Adams and Clark. They were received by
Kennedy’s secretary and ushered into Janeway’s office. Kennedy was in
conference with Janeway.

The conference ceased. “You’re going to lunch with us, Jim,” said
Gertrude.

“Second choice, eh?”

“Not with me, silly. I hope you wouldn’t expect to be first with
everybody?”

“If I hadn’t found a mistake of a hundred dollars in my favor in my
bank-account this morning, I couldn’t do it, anyway.”

“That won’t help much, Jim; we’ve decided to lunch in Michigan Avenue.”

“What are you two fussing about?” asked Louise, turning from her talk
with Janeway to get away from his eyes.

Kennedy looked at her. “When you write my epitaph, Mrs. Durand,” he
said gravely, “let it be brief: ‘Always short.’ One o’clock, I suppose?”

“What was it important you had to tell me?” asked Louise of Janeway.

“Come over here by the window,” suggested Janeway, leading the way.

“I don’t believe you have a thing,” declared Louise, following him
doubtfully. “You don’t act as if you had.”

“It’s something quite important, though not important at this moment.
I saw Bishop Marion last night. He asked me to have you bring him that
last letter from your aunt regarding your never having been baptized.
And I have supplied him with all the other affidavits he has requested
concerning the non-baptisms. He seems to attach great importance to
that point. I don’t quite see myself what difference it makes; but I’ve
won some desperate cases on seemingly inconsequential points.”

Janeway’s secretary appeared at the office door. “Mr. King, Mr.
Janeway.”

“I’ll see him in a moment,” said Janeway, as Kennedy and Gertrude
passed out into Kennedy’s office.

“Who,” murmured Louise, as the secretary retired, “is Mr. King?”

“Will King is President of the Standard Oil Company. An important
thing,” continued Janeway, pursuing his topic, “for every moment from
now till next Monday night, is _not_ to worry over the situation. I
feel,” he added, with a confidence real or assumed, “that everything
will come out right.”

Louise looked at him incredulously. “You don’t really?”

“I do.”

She drew a breath of relief. “You certainly know how to inspire
confidence.”

“That’s the way I earn my living. And my confidence expands enormously
whenever you come in sight. You’re so--so trim, so pretty; you appeal
to all the senses at once. First, you charm the eye; then there’s a
faint, indefinable fragrance in your presence----”

Louise rose. “The President of the Standard Oil Company is waiting.”

“Let him wait,” retorted Janeway. “I hadn’t finished. To continue----”

“But you’re not going to continue,” declared Louise firmly. “You’ve
said too much already. Next it will be my hat, and then my hair--that
takes a long time--and then my hands and my feet--and my suit--all
‘impinging,’ as you say, on the valuable time of the President of the
Standard Oil Company.”

Janeway looked closely at her, and pointed his words with a finger
pantomime. “Louise,” he said earnestly, “I want to ask you just one
question.”

“What is it?”

“If Will King were in here talking to you and I were out there waiting
to get in--how long do you suppose he’d keep me cooling _my_ heels
before he rang?”

“Suppose we ask him?” suggested Louise, retreating toward the door of
Kennedy’s office. She raised her arm and with a fast-waving hand said
good-by. “Which of these doors is the right one?” she asked. “I don’t
want to collide with poor Mr. King.”

“You never were more tantalizing in your life,” protested Janeway.
“I’ll let you go if you’ll do something. It’s too nice a day to lose.
Get through with your shopping in time for the three-o’clock train;
I’ll make it, too. We’ll get off at Cedar Point and motor home--it’s
only thirty miles.”

“How many times in thirty miles will you want to stop and talk to the
waves?”

He made a grimace of impatience. “Will you? That’s a good girl. I’ll
’phone Adolph to meet us at the Point with the roadster.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Janeway at Cedar Point took the wheel from Adolph, who boarded the
train, and with Louise beside him had driven half-way to Fond du Lac,
when a turn in the road brought them to the edge of the lake. Janeway
stopped the car, and, giving way, Louise walked with him out to the
beach. The sun was well down and a tonic north wind filled their
nostrils as they reached the edge of the waves, curling in long, even
swells up the sands.

Louise laughed. “A beach always makes me think of the first story I
ever heard about you; it gave me an idea of your terrible temper.”

“What could that have been?” demanded Janeway calmly.

“You took a big touring car down to Florida one winter. It was very
heavy. You had trouble with it all the time. Finally, one day you were
driving with friends along the beach, and the car stuck in the sand.
Nobody could budge it. In great wrath you despatched your chauffeur
for another car, put your party into it, drove off and left your big
car there for good.”

“I hope it’s there yet,” remarked Janeway, facing her unabashed.

“What an absurd thing for a great lawyer to do!”

“Don’t make fun of me. _You_ know what a humbug I am, anyway, don’t
you?”

They sat down on a ledge where the waves had undermined the turf. “No,
I don’t know,” protested Louise promptly. “You must be a great lawyer.
I’ve been hearing about it ever since I knew you. ‘Remarkably subtle
mind; extraordinary grasp on constitutional questions; exceptional as a
trial lawyer’!”

“What nonsense you know it all to be!”

“No, I don’t!” she insisted. “Haven’t I heard these judges that go
fishing with Uncle Sidney talk? And somehow”--she was poking the point
of her sunshade into the wet sand--“my ears are so wide open when your
name comes up. And I say to myself, I don’t care how subtle his mind
is--or how much he knows about the Constitution--or how much he sways a
jury----”

“Make me out as silly as you can.”

“That’s all.”

“No, you hadn’t finished. Go on.”

Louise was in no hurry to proceed. “If you have such a remarkably
subtle mind,” she said complacently, “you can guess the rest.”

“How much is there to it?”

With her sunshade she was drawing dancing dolls in the sand. “Just four
words,” she said finally.

He could get no more from her, but she promised to tell him some time.
When he called up late that evening, she thought the telephone was not
the proper medium for at least one of the words.

“I hope it’s not a swear word,” he said reprovingly.

Her reply followed a slight pause. “I’m afraid it is, in a way. At
least, many people swear by it.”

Before train time, in the morning, a note addressed in a hand he
recognized by instinct was brought to his apartment. It bore a
“Personal” caution above his name. He slit open the envelope, and
found an unsigned correspondence card. On it was written in a small,
fast-flowing hand:

“I’m awfully sorry I made that promise last night. You wheedled it out
of me with that jury-fixing way of yours. Now, it makes me feel very
silly indeed. But, since I promised: when I hear all these nonsensical
things about you, I say to myself: I don’t care; he loves me, _anyway_.”

He neglected his morning paper, and having no prospect of seeing Louise
that day, he called up, as the next best thing, her brother George,
and asked him to take lunch at the Lawyers’ Club. At the table he
reproached George for neglecting to run up to see his sister oftener,
and having done so, told him the story of his hopes.

George listened with interest. He was pleased. But he made little of
the difficulties that Janeway confessed confronted him. “If you want
her, take her!” he exclaimed. “No institution should step in between
a man and a woman that want to live together. And a man and a woman
should live together only till they’re tired of each other--no longer.”

“But suppose one tires and the other doesn’t?”

“That minute,” declared George emphatically, “they should quit.”

“So,” commented Janeway, “when a man sees a woman he likes better than
the first one he has picked on, he should desert Number One for Number
Two--Number Two for Number Three--and so on down the line.”

“Just that!” exclaimed Louise’s brother. “And for a woman, exactly
the same privilege. An ironclad marriage contract is a curse to human
nature. If you want people to be happy, leave men and women as free as
birds of the air to mate when and where and with whom they choose, and
as often as they choose.”

“But, George,” said Janeway composedly, “would you give me such a
privilege as that with your own sister? Would you condemn a woman like
Louise to the filth of that kind of a sex barnyard?”

“Let the woman that wants to keep out of it, keep out.”

“That’s not the way your soviet heroes talk in Russia. They’re drafting
women in Russia, George. When a man wants a woman, they profess to
‘need’ her, for the ‘service of the state’ in their soviet barnyard.”

Fargo shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not responsible for what’s done in
Russia. I want men and women to be free.”

“Durand ought to be a good recruit for your ideas,” suggested Janeway,
meditating, “and the bigger you make your barnyard the more popular it
will be with the Simmses and Durands of your commonwealth. Well, here’s
to your sex barnyard, George! May it flourish in your servile state!”

“But I think I can safely say that at least one Fargo of your family
and one Janeway of mine will never avail themselves of its freedom!”

It was only after he returned to the office that he learned from
Kennedy that the Durand Steel Company had passed its dividend. This was
not reassuring, in view of the large cash settlement asked for Louise,
to which he was holding Durand. But more disquieting was the further
news that Kennedy had had the night before from Gertrude Durand. Bob,
she told him, had quarrelled and, she thought, broken with Maymie
Montgomery. And as an anticlimax came news under a scare-head in the
evening papers that Mrs. Simms had brought suit for divorce, with the
revolting particular that she had named, among others in her bill, her
Wheaton relative.

Reaching Fond du Lac late, hot, quite tired, and grown serious with the
day’s developments, a telegram, as he stepped from the train, was put
in Janeway’s hands.

He tore it open on the platform; it was from Kennedy.

“Final decree in the Durand-Durand case came down late this afternoon.
Property settlement gives Mrs. Durand practically everything asked for.
Copy ready for you in the morning. Either party may remarry at any
time. Congratulations!”

From his apartment Janeway despatched a messenger, enclosing the
message to Louise.




CHAPTER XXI

CAN I WIN AGAIN?


On Saturday night Janeway had a political meeting to address in
Chicago. Uneasy over the developments in his own particular concerns,
the task of speaking seemed an especially onerous one. But the meeting
was meant to launch the Harding campaign in the Middle West, and
demanded his best possible effort; its success was deemed vital.

The night proved insufferably warm, but the auditorium was packed.
Despite the weather handicap and his own mental anxieties, Janeway,
whose sympathies were enlisted in the signal defeat of the incumbent
administration, rose to the occasion. Never a strong partisan, his
detachment on ordinary issues lent force to his present appeal, and
in the eight years of Mr. Wilson’s record in the White House he found
ample material for his purpose. His facts, chosen strictly with a view
to their cumulative force, concealed his bitterness skilfully, and with
his energy carefully in hand, Janeway, in speaking, seemed the frankest
and most disinterested man in the huge gathering.

Simms had come down with Judge Harrison to see how the thing went off.
His first expression of opinion was given in reply to a prod from
Harrison as the two left the platform. “The mildest-mannered man,”
quoted Simms vindictively, “that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat.”

Harrison’s comment was dry: “All throats should be cut and all ships
scuttled in that fashion; it’s the most effective. He certainly bored
into your craft to-night.”

“Jury talk--jury talk, Janeway,” sputtered Simms impatiently, as the
three men sat down to supper.

“If every case I’ve had to lay before a jury had as much merit as that,
my juries wouldn’t have to leave the box,” remarked Janeway.

“Why can’t you come out square in the open and fight clean and
aboveboard?” demanded Simms, with indignation.

“There are several answers to that,” returned Janeway lazily. “The
first is, it’s too hot.”

“You appeared to have ’em with you to-night, Henry,” observed Harrison,
biting his cigar.

“A man that couldn’t talk on _that_ subject,” exclaimed Janeway, “would
have to be born in darkest America. I’m no patriot; but any man, after
he’s been robbed, and bludgeoned, into the bargain, will talk.”

Janeway had intended to stay at the club, but Harrison persuaded him
the heat was such that he could not sleep in the city, anyway. He
finally accepted Harrison’s suggestion that he ride to Fond du Lac
with Simms and himself in Harrison’s car. Still warm from his work,
Janeway took the seat with the chauffeur, and, lapsing into silence,
gave little heed to the talk in the tonneau. He had enough to think
about. And the stars were good company. The travellers had looked for a
deserted roadstead, but the highway was packed with cars the whole way
home. They reached Fond du Lac drowsy but cooled, just as the east was
brightening with the new day.

Janeway, still keyed up from his effort, slept uneasily and for only
a few hours. At breakfast a sudden resolve seized him--to go to
church. And next to go to the procathedral, because there he might see
Louise. He was to be at Gertrude’s in the evening for dinner, but the
intervening hours bulked before him like an age.

When he reached the church, High Mass was under way. The usher he met
in the vestibule proved a local acquaintance whom Janeway knew but
could not place, and who, with a quick smile, beckoned the chance
visitor to come with him. Janeway would have sought an inconspicuous
place, but it was impossible, without running, to catch up with his
guide to ask for one. To his great annoyance the young man, treating
him as an exhibit, led him on and on down the crowded centre aisle,
till Janeway, red in the face, found himself seated within a few pews
of the altar-rail. Unluckily, too, the pewholder whose hospitality had
been invoked in his behalf knew Janeway, and the efforts on his part to
make the unexpected guest feel at home made him feel the less so. From
the choir-loft came the martial strains of the Gloria. But by giving
his attention with ostentatious correctness to what Harrison would have
termed “the proceedings” at the high altar, Janeway gradually cooled,
and, as he did so, recovered his poise.

By that time the pulpit had been rolled to the front, and a young
clergyman was reading the announcements. Janeway listened to the
opening of the sermon, mentally following and changing at times the
words and phrases of the youthful orator, but sympathetic to the
simplicity of his presentation. Then his mind wandered, and he recalled
the last time--some years earlier--that he had been in that church. It
was at the funeral of an elderly man, a client. Janeway had drawn his
will, and the family asked Janeway to be a pall-bearer, because of the
friendship the dead man had felt for him.

The incident had fixed itself in Janeway’s mind because of an unusual
circumstance. The dead man had failed in Fond du Lac in business. It
had been a bad failure and a compromise with the creditors. The man
had been, through Janeway’s efforts, legally freed from his debts.
Years afterward a strange thing--at least in Janeway’s experience--had
happened. The man, succeeding then very well, had come and told him he
wished to make further payments to his old creditors, until they should
receive, when and as he was able, a hundred cents on the dollar for
their claims. Janeway had notified the creditors, widely scattered, and
a large initial payment had been made, when death had knocked at the
heart of his client, and, dying, he had told everything to his lawyer,
because it then became a necessity.

In his old failure the man, now long dead, had concealed an item in his
assets. It had never been found out--never would be, Janeway had told
him--but the client was bent on making complete restitution, and now
committed the unfinished amend to his two grown sons. Janeway was made
solemnly to promise that, so far as in him lay, he would see that the
dead man’s sons carried out their father’s dying injunction--though
they were never to know the real reason for it; Janeway had urged that
they should not.

The two sons, strong men, had faithfully co-operated in the discharge
of the debt. It left Janeway now only to recall the strictness of the
dying man’s code, and how a sort of death agony of humiliation had
beaded his brow in the moment he found himself forced to confess to his
attorney a shameful delinquency.

The sermon was ended--though it happened it was the dead man who had
preached to Janeway’s somewhat cynical views, formed among men of
large affairs, on conscientious scruples. And Janeway now recollected
it was the younger of his friend’s two sons who had ushered him to an
honorable seat before the altar, and the older who had welcomed him to
the family pew.

The Mass had been resumed when Janeway’s mind returned to the scene
before him. He wondered whether Louise might be in the church, but
the perfervid usher had placed him where he could see but few of the
congregation. The music of the Credo reached his ears; then the dignity
of the function at the altar, as the officiating priest reached the
Canon of the Mass, held his interest. With the coming of the Sanctus he
heard the strident warning of an altar-bell. The solemn moment of the
celebration was at hand, and the hush that spread over the crowded nave
reacted on Janeway.

He shared, without knowing why, in the suspense of the waiting
multitude of which he had made himself one. He watched, without
understanding, the priest bow low, in the words of the consecration,
and suddenly kneel, while the acolyte struck the bell again. He saw the
heads bowed about him as the Host was elevated. It was as if he had for
a moment participated in some strange new sensation, some mystery never
before touched on. He fell musing on what his new feeling might be,
surrendered an instant to its restfulness, and only the music of the
Agnus Dei, storming heaven with its plea, brought him uncertainly back
to his surroundings.

Abandoned to his dreaming mood, seeing and hearing what his eyes and
ears filmed before his senses, yet with his mind wandering to the
battlefields of France, back to the altar and then to Louise, he sat,
half in trance, until the priest, turning toward him, held the Host
aloft and repeated the words of the _Domine, non sum dignus_, while an
acolyte, walking down to the rail, threw over it the communion cloth.

A burst of music fell upon Janeway’s ears. With the unison of many
voices rising higher and still higher in the pleading of the Agnus
Dei, the thunders of the organ rolled down the long nave. He heard,
breaking in on this, the harsh clang of the sanctuary bell. Then he
was conscious of a hush among the people, and his ear caught a quick
feminine step in the aisle--a slender figure, that of a youthful woman,
her veil half raised, passed him rapidly and knelt at the foot of the
sanctuary steps. It was Louise.

Janeway’s shock, the thrill of watching her walk up alone before the
silent congregation in an act of humility and faith, blended into the
solemnity of the scene. The hush of the watching multitude under the
prayer of the swelling music, the priest coming slowly down from the
altar, bearing the ciborium and the Host, held him motionless. He saw
Louise rise, ascend the steps, and kneel at the sanctuary rail to
receive the Holy Eucharist.

He had seen this woman who had so entered his life, in many aspects of
loveliness--to him; under many circumstances moving--to him; in many
moods that ministered to every wish of his heart, that stilled with
hope every desire of his being; yet in none of these had she seemed
quite as she now seemed, kneeling alone before him at the altar; it was
as if a curtain never before raised had been lifted; as if, himself
unseen, he had for an instant looked into her soul.

He passed out as the congregation passed out, saw Louise kneeling,
with head bowed, in a seat well down the aisle, and waited outside in
the sunshine. When she appeared she half tripped down the cathedral
steps, laughing at seeing him. She bore in on his stiff seriousness,
as she always did when care free, with bantering questions. She seemed
to bring out something pleasant but only rudimentary in his nature.
Her light-heartedness, her buoyancy of spirit, knocked at something
dormant, something neglected, but something that could be awakened,
in his own nature, and, whatever it was, pleasant to feel. In a few
moments she could change his mood, put new thoughts into his head, lift
his spirits, naturally sober, to her own.

“You must have covered yourself with glory last night,” she said, as
they started to walk home.

“I covered myself with perspiration. It was fearfully close. I hope the
election won’t be like it.”

“The morning papers featured you.”

“Not for any love of me; they want Harding elected.”

“It was a dreadful photograph of you. But”--she lifted her eyes to his
for just an instant--“I was awfully proud. Gertrude and I were sorry we
hadn’t gone down.”

“If you’d been there I should have forgotten my speech.”

“It was so warm I lay awake nearly all night, anyway. Then I overslept
this morning and missed the early Masses.”

“That was for my particular benefit.” He turned to her as they walked.
“It amazes me, how little I think of outside you. When I leave you,
it’s only to wonder when I shall see you again.”

“Heavens!” she exclaimed. She was looking straight ahead to break the
gathering force of his words, and saw an unwelcome sight. “There comes
Mr. Simms.”

Janeway, too, was annoyed, but turned it off. “If he carries any tales
I’ll kill him,” he said evenly.

Simms greeted them effusively. He stopped a moment to abuse Janeway
for his talk at the auditorium and moved on. Janeway hung on till he
reached Gertrude’s. Louise could not do otherwise than ask him in.
Indeed, she was little loath to cling to his company. Gertrude had not
come down-stairs, and Janeway sat in the dining-room while Louise took
her rolls and coffee.

“Sure you won’t have a cup--just a little one?” she asked, more than
once--partly for hospitality and largely in an effort to divert his
mind from an all-pervading interest in everything she was doing. He
declined refreshment, but walked with her out into the garden. They sat
down in the shade of the pergola.

“Will Simms do us any harm?” Louise asked. She was sitting close beside
him, in the lee, as it were, of his arm; he had thrown it along the
back of the bench and sat half facing her. She, in the sheerest of
white, tried not to be self-conscious, but Janeway, however quiet, made
the effort an unremitting one. When she asked her question, his eyes
happened to be bent on her hands, folded very simply in her lap. And
when he made no answer, she repeated her question. “Will Simms, do you
think, do us any harm?”

“All he can,” he returned contemptuously. “How nice and cool you look,”
he added.

“I am cool. Your suit is too heavy for to-day, isn’t it?”

“I always forget to change. Where did you get such hands?”

“Isn’t it terrible to want to make trouble for others?”

Janeway half laughed. “I’m going to play golf with him this afternoon.
And I’m going to hand him a poser myself.”

“What kind of a poser?”

He regarded her with quizzical benevolence. “Gertrude has invited me
for dinner. I’ll tell you to-night.”

       *       *       *       *       *

At dinner Kennedy joined them. Gertrude and he sat down with Louise and
Janeway. Afterward Kennedy and Gertrude went for a drive. Louise and
Janeway walked in the summer night up the lake front, and, returning,
sought the coolness of the garden. Only twenty-four hours lay between
them and the crisis of their lives, and its impending weighed, despite
the efforts of each to conceal from the other the strain both felt.
“It’s no use, I guess,” said Janeway at last. “We’re trying to talk and
think about everything but what we actually _are_ thinking of, if not
talking about; I would to-morrow night were past!”

“You were going to tell me what you said to Simms.”

“Then first I must tell you why I said it. A new complication arose
yesterday. I said nothing about it for fear it should worry you; don’t
let it--any more than you can help, anyway. Durand has quarrelled
with Mrs. Montgomery, I hear. That makes our situation somewhat more
delicate--if anything can,” he added with gentle irony. “So I injected
another factor into the case to-day. I said to Simms: ‘Simms, I’m
beginning to feel Bob Durand and I both made a mistake in quarrelling.
I’m going to tell him so at the first opportunity. Is there any good
reason why we shouldn’t resume our old relations?’

“Simms was struck dumb. You can imagine how that set on _him_. His head
will whirl like a merry-go-round till he can get Durand’s ear and warn
him I’ve got something dangerous up my sleeve. In point of fact, I
have, but not of the sort he supposes.

“With that astonishing overture planted, their minds will be in
confusion for a day, at least; in it we may escape; I wish to God I
knew!”

Louise drew herself up a little and took a breath as if of resolve. She
looked at him with something of the affection she usually guarded so
closely.

“Whatever comes, Henry,” she said quietly, “I can never be grateful
enough for your patient restraint. If nothing else had touched my
heart, that would. From the very first you’ve been, every moment,
considerate! Don’t imagine I don’t realize it; don’t imagine--” Afraid
to go too far, she checked herself as quickly as she had begun. “It’s
out of fashion nowadays in love-making, you know,” she said, with a
hard laugh.

“Yes, I do know,” he answered simply. “I realize how foolish I should
seem, tried by present-day standards. ‘If you want her,’ says even as
wise a man as Judge Harrison, ‘tear her silly religious scruples away
from her--they’re out of date--carry her off!’ ‘Yes,’ I said to him,
‘I’ve thought of that, too. I’m not an expert at love-making. And it
may be that if another type of woman were in question, I might forcibly
abduct her. But I’m not interested in a mere abduction. I want to live
my whole life with the woman I love. I want her to be happy--otherwise
I can’t be. To separate her with violence from her matured convictions
in the most vital of concerns, after what she has already been through,
might work for a while. But should I really have the same woman I
loved? Or altogether another sort of woman?’

“When I was young in the law I used to tie men up for my clients in
contracts so tight they couldn’t breathe; I never do that any more. Men
will sign; but if the agreements are too violently one-sided they won’t
stick.

“I think,” he went on, “a man would be a poor manager--he’d be a
mighty poor judge of human nature, and that means a poor lawyer--if,
on catching a humming-bird and a hawk, he were to treat them both
alike. You might starve the hawk, common style, into tameness; but
the humming-bird would die. I don’t see what I have to gain by doing
violence to mine; I want her exactly what she is--not turned into a
hawk. She might, some time, sink her claws into _me_!”

Wrapped in thought, Janeway, while Louise made comment, looked out
across the garden. In a moment he laughed. “What is it?” she asked.

“I was just thinking,” returned Janeway, “when I get to heaven----”

“Oh!” exclaimed Louise, “you expect to get there, then?”

“Well, for my trial, at least; I understand every man is to have his
‘last day’ in court. I want to ask God just one question. I want to
turn my eyes back for once on the ruck of men and women that incumber
this earth, and say: ‘How did You stand them?’”

Louise laughed. “I shouldn’t dare ask Him that.”

“Why not?”

“He might ask: ‘How did I stand _you_?’”

She saw, despite his raillery, how his anxiety was centred on what
confronted them in the interpellation. “You’ve borne it all so well,”
she said, “and you’ve done nothing to deserve all this. I feel like a
wretch to inflict it on you.”

His hand covered hers. “My only fear once was that you might refuse to
‘inflict’ your difficulties on me. Even now I suffer more suspense for
you, if possible, than for myself--though I can’t think of us any more
as two; I think of us only as one. If I am anxious, if I am sometimes
worried----”

“I know more than you think how it has weighed on you.”

“If it has, it’s because it’s all so strange, so unaccustomed in my
life; it’s because it stirs depths that I never knew were within me
till I loved you. Then, when I think coolly of it, and of my chances,
Louise--” He checked himself. “Why should I say this to you?”

She resented his forbearance. “I want to hear everything.”

“Sometimes I feel like a gambler--a gambler who, staking all on the
fickle turn of a card, has played the game year after year and won; a
gambler who looks back now, awed, at the wrecks on every side, that sat
at the same table with him, laid the same stake, success, on the same
card--and lost!

“And now”--his fingers closed over hers--“I grope forward again
bringing in my hand--not as steady as it used to be--my old stake,
success! And this time I bring with it my only chance for happiness--my
life--and I bring it to the table to take the last chance on the last
card that can ever turn for me in this world----”

“Don’t say that!”

“But I do say it! And I say to myself: Is it even _possible_ I can win
again?”




CHAPTER XXII

LOUISE AWAITS DURAND


Twenty-four hours later Bishop Marion’s residence was well lighted. Its
evening appearance indicated something like a reception. But it was not
to be, in the conventional sense of the word, a reception, although, as
Judge Harrison, accompanying the two solemn arbitrators, remarked in
nasal undertones to his cigar, “matters of great pith and moment” were
to go forward that night within those walls.

Harrison, in fact, with the representatives of the men and of the
company, was the first that evening to ring the Bishop’s bell and
to be received into the public office. While the Arbitration Board,
made complete by the Bishop, were examining their findings for the
final signatures, the door-bell rang the second time. The man-servant
answering the summons received Simms, as Durand’s attorney, and Durand
himself.

They were shown into the reception-room and told that the Bishop would
join them in a moment. The man, retiring, closed the door behind him.

Durand was neither in an amiable frame of mind nor in a waiting mood.
The issue of the wage controversy had gone somewhat against him, and
had added to his personal and corporate annoyance. Ignoring the
parting invitation of the passive servant to be seated, he strode
almost truculently from one to another of the pictures on the walls,
inspecting them with rapid and impatient disdain, and glancing with
querulous eyes in one direction after another as he heard the sound of
footsteps outside the closed doors of the room--for the Bishop’s house
was large and his visitors, on occasion, numerous; arrangements for the
receiving of different parties without intruding one on the other had
long been studied and pretty well perfected.

But on this evening an exception had been made to the careful
arrangements for front-door entries. One of his expected guests the
Bishop had thought entitled to even more protection from possible
contretemps. The young woman, on whose shoulders he had laid, in the
discharge of his office, the heavy duty of interpellating a gross
and revengeful husband, he considered entitled to his own household
entrance by the inconspicuous door of the side street.

There, Louise, accompanied by Gertrude, whom she had begged to come
with her, and by Janeway, was received by Father Smyth, the Bishop’s
secretary, and shown into a small anteroom to await Bishop Marion,
when he should be ready to summon her for her ordeal. This anteroom
communicated with the reception-room in which Durand was then waiting;
it might easily have been the sound of his wife’s or Janeway’s
footsteps that Durand at one moment impatiently heard. But the house
was old and honestly built, and its walls and doors gave no echo to
voices. The Bishop’s sister appeared in a moment. When she left the
room she took Gertrude with her.

Durand, finding nothing to please him in his surroundings, turned on
Simms. “Well, where _is_ this meeting here to-night?” he snapped.

“In the Bishop’s office, I suppose.”

“Why don’t we go in there? What’s all this red tape for? I thought you
said they’d be waiting for us!”

Each question came sharper than the last. Simms knew there was nothing
to do, but felt called on to get up out of the comfortable chair he had
settled in and pace the floor a little himself. “I guess they _are_
waiting for us,” he said defensively, “but we’ll have to wait here till
the Bishop takes us in.”

“Takes us in!” retorted Durand. “I’ll say so! Five hundred thousand
dollars a year added to our pay-roll. Then this divorce settlement
gouge! And you thought you’d get rid of her for nothing!”

His words made Simms sulky. “You’re lucky she didn’t cost you an even
million. If Janeway’d had his way, you’d not have got off so light.”

Durand’s lips tightened. “I’ll get back at that fellow some time.”

“Watch him till you do. He made a mighty queer crack at me yesterday.
It made me think he’s got some kind of home-brew fixing for both of
us. He’s sticking mighty close to your wife. I saw ’em out yesterday
together.”

“Sticking close to a fifty-per-cent fee,” said Durand. “I saw him out
myself yesterday morning with a classy dame.”

“Where?”

“In Lake Street.”

“What time?”

“About eleven o’clock; I was driving down Fifth.”

“That was your wife with Janeway.”

“What?”

Durand’s exclamation expressed his incredulity. “Great Scott, man,”
demanded Simms peevishly, “don’t you know your own wife when you see
her?”

“Was that Louise? Well!” Durand half laughed. “Queening up, ain’t she?”

“She always was a queen. I never could see what you wanted to throw her
over for,” observed Simms, willing to return to Durand something of his
own daily portion of ill-humor at his employer’s hands.

Durand only made a mouth. “She’s caught the style.”

“If you’d held on to a wife like that, your lady friends wouldn’t all
be hounding you to marry ’em.”

“Oh, hell!” Whatever Durand meant to add to an inelegant expletive was
cut short. Bishop Marion opened the hall door.

“Well, Bishop,” said Simms, in his naturally pompous manner, and
after the rather stiff greetings, “we’re--er--ready to meet the Board
and--er--clean this thing up. Sooner the better, eh?”

“You will find the Board members and Judge Harrison in my office. Come
this way, please.”

The meeting in the Bishop’s office, requiring the signatures of the
parties at interest, was formal and not prolonged, but to Louise and
her companion the moments dragged with leaden feet. Janeway used the
tactics he had so often employed with a client when waiting for a
verdict, that is, he kept going a series of remarks neither frivolous
nor serious, choosing subjects to divert, if possible, her mind and his
own.

“It’s a curious fact,” he said, musing, when other topics had failed,
and staring in an absent-minded way at the high, bare walls of the
little room in which the two were cooped, with two small chairs and a
very small table. “I never come into this old house without feeling
better when I go away from it. And somehow I feel that’s just what’s
going to happen to-night.”

Louise smiled. It was a smile of sympathy for him, such sympathy as
a woman is capable of expressing for a man she has learned to love,
even at a moment when she herself is the greater sufferer; such as a
woman is capable of feeling for one loved, even at a moment that she
immolates herself on the altar of their mutual affection. Women can do
these things; if men ever can, it is because they have learned how from
women.

“I wish I had your courage,” she said, in simple reply.

Janeway reached across the table. “Your hands are cold.”

“I shouldn’t mind that if my knees would keep still.”

“I wish I could put mine under you,” exclaimed Janeway, “though they
might carry you too far or too fast for your work to-night. But simply
be composed, Louise, in what you say. And say only what the Bishop
requires you to say. Don’t say too much; many a man has come to grief
through that. Do you remember the Bishop’s exact words?”

“I think so.”

“Be everlastingly sure so.”

“But if I am in good faith, I must be natural?”

Janeway threw up his hands. “If you’re natural you’ll ruin us! Be
cattish, cold, ominous--but not natural. While you talk, I’ll go into
the office and sit with Judge Harrison.”

“And remember,” he continued, always in raillery, but with a shrewd
admixture of prudence, “these are the vital words. I will repeat them:
‘It is my duty, under certain conditions, to live with you as your
wife.’ Come out strong with ‘conditions.’ Don’t, for the love of God,
Louise, let too much of the sweetness of your mouth breathe into your
words. And these are the conditions: ‘That you will not, in any way,
interfere in the practice of my religion.’ Use those very words, ‘in
any way’--they will irritate him.”

“Henry!”

“And don’t talk too long. If you do, I’ll break into the room myself.”
He regarded her critically, as a master might study a prized pupil, his
glance roving from feature to feature, as if calculating the danger
each might contribute to the impending situation. His eyes rested at
length on her hat, a close-fitting affair, with just crown enough to
add artfully to her height and frame the slender outline of her face.
“Darling!” he exclaimed, with a despairing gesture. “Why did you wear
your prettiest hat? _Why_ didn’t you put on an old one? You should have
dressed dowdily for the part--_why_ didn’t we think of it? I’m always,”
he said angrily, “forgetting something vitally important.”

“But this hat _is_ an old one,” cried Louise under her breath, in
self-defense. “I brought it from Paris.”

“I wish you’d brought one from Oshkosh!”

“I might take it off.”

“That would be worse. When I began practice,” he went on, “I never
let a feminine client appear before a jury till she had passed my
inspection. If it were a widow suing a heartless corporation, she
was drenched in grief and trappings of woe when she entered the
court-room--no gay-widow business there; and even then I’d have
to tell her that if her new fiancé put his head so much as inside
the court-room door, I’d drop the case. And if it were breach of
promise--well! My client was sent straight from my office to a beauty
parlor--the very first shot out of the box--and dolled up, every
morning the trial was on, within an inch of her life. I’ve had some
queer-looking dames come back from those places.”

There was a slight knock. The door of the reception-room opened. Bishop
Marion stood before them. “Your husband,” he said quietly to Louise,
“is here.”

She rose with a start and looked from one to the other of the two men.
“How shall I ever face him?” she murmured.

“Don’t be frightened,” said the Bishop calmly. “He is in the office
with Mr. Simms and the arbitrators. They have signed. I’ve told him
you are here and wish to speak to him a moment in the reception-room.
You ask how you shall ever face him. You will face him, my child, by
committing your cause to God, who will not fail you. And to the Mother
of God, who was a woman, and knew suffering even as you have known it.
Neither God nor His blessed Mother will for one moment desert you or
see you tried beyond your strength. That is how you will face him--with
the right on your side, and leaving the issue in God’s hands. We two
will retire now. Come in this way. I will ask Father Smyth to send your
husband in.”

Bishop Marion pointed the way to the reception-room. Janeway spoke.

“Give me just a moment, Bishop,” he said. “I will follow you.” The
Bishop walked from the antechamber. Janeway took Louise’s hand. The
two looked into each other’s eyes. Janeway drew her hand close and for
the first time slipped his arm behind her. “Courage, my darling,” he
said, tenderly. “This is the last battle you will ever fight alone; the
last moment, I hope, that will ever separate us. And if it separate us
forever--let it leave us, at least, the memory of a kiss!”

He drew her to him. Her hands caught the lapels of his coat. Their lips
met. Releasing herself, she whispered, still looking into his eyes:
“You must go!”




CHAPTER XXIII

THE INTERPELLATION


She stood behind the centre table in the reception-room, fingering,
with rather a pathetic effort to appear at ease, the leaves of an open
pamphlet that lay near the call-bell on the table before her. Under the
electric light of the old-fashioned chandelier above, her hat partly
shading her face bent down, and with her gloves in one hand, Louise’s
eyes saw nothing of what they looked at. She could not have named one
word of the printed pages passing slowly under her sensitive fingers;
she could not even call to mind the words she was soon to speak, so
intently were her ears keyed to listening for the familiar stride of
her husband’s feet; it was a sound that had too often brought her
unhappiness to be at any time lightly awaited. When at last she heard
it, she suffered acutely, nor would she look up even when she knew he
had halted in the open doorway, for she was determined he should speak
first.

Durand entered the room, carrying his overcoat on his arm and with his
hat in his hand; the hat he laid, with something of an air, on the
table as he reached it, and faced Louise. And he was too preoccupied
to notice that the servant who conducted him to the reception-room had
closed the door as he withdrew.

“I understand you want to see me?” he said, speaking as if to a
stranger on business.

The grating quality of his voice seemed not particularly harsh in the
words, but Louise so dreaded and detested all of its qualities that any
words would have served as a challenge.

She stiffened defensively, apprehension took wings, her mind cleared.
“I have a question to ask, Robert,” she said, looking up at him from
across the table.

“What’s your question?” he inquired coolly.

“Since I saw you last I have become a Catholic. Will you accept
baptism, that you may live with me again?”

“What!” His exclamation, weighted with contempt, sufficiently rejected
the thought, but he added a definite, emphatic word: “No!”

“I won’t try to tell you how it happened--” she continued.

“Don’t!”

“--nor why. And what I have further to say will seem very strange to
you.”

He stood with one hand on the back of a chair that faced her. “A good
many of your ideas have seemed strange to me,” he retorted harshly.

“My religion,” she continued, not heeding his contemptuous tone,
“imposes a duty on me; it has become necessary for me to offer, under
certain conditions, to live with you again as your wife.”

Of all the possibilities he had anticipated, none were within the
slightest range of what he now heard. “Well!” he exclaimed, sparring
for breath. “This _is_ a go!” He eyed her intently--as if, with her
will or against it, to read her mind. But for the first time, looking
into her face, he realized he could not do that which he had once
done. Something new in her eyes, some impalpable barrier, seemed now
to screen her thoughts. “What do you mean by ‘certain conditions’?” he
finished by asking suspiciously.

She was ready. “That I be free,” she answered quietly, “at all times to
practise my religion without hindrance of any kind; and that you do not
compel me to do anything against my conscience.”

Durand threw out a little smoke-mask of his own. His eyes, dwelling
instinctively on her erect figure, and noting the rounded cheeks,
flushed under her lifted veil, had impressed her comeliness anew on his
senses. She looked very pretty. Maymie, he had complained to Simms,
though still sprightly, was already close to fat; and when once he had
told her she was eating too much, swore at him--being of a sensitive
temperament--and slapped his face.

“Look here, Louise,” he said, coming back patronizingly to the present
situation, “you’ve always suffered from enlargement of the conscience.
That’s what used to be the matter with you.”

She made an involuntary gesture of disdain. Unhappily, it served only
to attract him. Durand, in his dealings both with men and women, loved
about the same degree of active protest from them that a cat enjoys in
the struggles of a mouse.

“I suppose you know we’ve been divorced lately,” he continued.
“Catholics don’t believe in divorce, do they?”

“Certainly,” returned Louise collectedly, “not in divorce as you
understand it.”

“After they’re divorced they can’t marry anybody else, can they?”

She met each thrust evenly. “Not,” she answered, “if they have been
validly married.”

The suspicion of a grin crossed Durand’s face. “So you’d like your
wicked husband back.”

“It is my duty,” she repeated in a frosty monotone, though with rising
uneasiness, “to offer to live again with you as your wife, under the
conditions I have named. But only under those conditions.”

It seemed as if her very aloofness added to her present danger. Durand
stepped closer to the table in front of her. “Look here, Louise,” he
repeated--and she almost shuddered at the thawing in his tone--“this
is the first time I’ve talked business with you since we quarrelled
that night in your room; maybe we’ve both learned something since.
You got me hot; I guess I talked pretty rough. But I never really had
anything against you. You were foolish to fuss about my little riots.
A red-blooded man has got to be free to live his life. If you’d be a
sport once in a while yourself you wouldn’t mind my fun. You’ve got
the sparkle in you for a good time, if you’d warm up a little. That’s
all that ever made trouble between us--you’re too frosty. You could
outdance and outsing, and, for that matter, outdrink any chicken in
the coop--if you’d _do_ it.”

All her latent hatred of the man before her glowed at his words.
Indeed, she had never detested him so much, because fear was not now
uppermost as it had long been in her submerged years. So intense was
her feeling that restraint became difficult. If she controlled herself
it was only by thinking of another man, one waiting, and for whom
she was making her desperate fight for liberty. She looked at Durand
steadily. “Never expect me to dance as you want drunken women to dance.
Never expect me to sing, half drunk, the songs your friends sing; never
expect me to drink as they drink. I hate it!” She threw her aversion
into her tones. Durand, looking at her with increasing interest,
laughed. This sort of a spirit was new in Louise.

“Well,” he asked lazily, “you could drink with me once in a while all
by your lonesome, couldn’t you, kitten?” He laughed again. “Remember
the night you wouldn’t drink whiskey straight, and I put the gin in it
when you asked for water? You had the Follies put to sleep that night!”

Her face flushed painfully. She reddened to her neck, and for an
instant stared past him, in humiliation. Then she fixed her eyes
steadily on his. “I didn’t know, that night,” she said quietly, “what
whiskey was.”

“That wasn’t my fault. I was full of it when I married you.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Well,” he persisted, “didn’t I always do everything I could for you?
Did I ever refuse you money?”

“Yes.”

“Not often,” he exclaimed, not quite pleased. “Maybe sometimes when
you wanted to give it away. Louise, if you’d brace up--just be a good
pal once in a while and meet my friends like friends, you and I could
waddle along like two ducks. This is a gay old world; but if you want
to be happy, you’ve got to give it a chance to make you happy.”

She instinctively drew back her head. “I can’t dance through life with
friends without homes, women without names, men without decency. I
tried to make a home for you; I loved it--you loved every place else. I
loved children--you abominated them.”

“We want to live while we live, don’t we? Not mould in a nursery.
Come! Meet me half-way. I’ll be reasonable; you’ve been badly advised.
That man Janeway, not content with playing traitor to me and secretly
fanning my trouble with my men, has stung me for a big settlement on
you in this divorce suit--cripples me, with the worst time ahead in the
steel business since 1893.”

She almost started with the fear of what Janeway’s persistence in the
settlement might now do.

“Together,” he went on, speaking fast now, “we can make a go of the
thing, much better than if we split our resources. You’re a good
business woman--as Gertrude never gets tired of reminding me. I’m not
stuck on marrying Montgomery; it’s she that’s keen for that. What do
you want in a reconciliation?”

It was the cruelest of all the moments. She felt the ground slipping
from under her feet. While he spoke, she was praying desperately for
help to know what to say. All she could think of she mechanically
uttered. “I will do my duty toward you as a wife. But”--and then came
the inspiration she had asked for--“do not expect me ever again to
merge my means with yours. As long as we live, my estate must always be
separate. Nor will I ever again live with you such a life as you have
lived, Robert.”

She, who knew its lines so well, could perceive in his face the blow
her decision to retain control of her estate had been. A sneering
changed his expression. “There you go again,” he said with a snap.
“More conscience--you’ve always had that after the first cocktail.”

“I can’t be the chum of the companions who came between us before,” she
said composedly, though both knew they were not talking of the real
blow to his pretensions.

“Look here, Louise,” he began, with his favorite opening; but there was
a harder note in his voice, “this thing looks a little queer to me.
I’ll ask you a question: Do you come to me of your own free will?”

She paused slightly. “Yes,” she said at length.

“No one told you to, eh? Why don’t you answer? Are Christians supposed
to tell the truth?”

“Yes.”

“And to answer questions?”

“If one has the right to ask them.”

“Am I your husband, or not?”

“I suppose you are, in one sense.”

“Then if a husband has the right to ask the truth of his wife”--he was
enjoying his high rôle--“I ask you, who told you to come to me in this
way?”

She welcomed the question. “Bishop Marion,” she answered, quite
unafraid.

He flew into a rage. “He thinks if I take you back, he’ll get all my
money some day, eh?”

“Bishop Marion told me it was my duty to ask you what I have asked
to-night.”

“So that’s the wrinkle! This meddlesome Bishop tries to run you back on
_me_!”

“Do you wish time, Robert, to think over what I have asked you?”

He raised his head defiantly. “No! Not on your life!”

“Then,” she exclaimed swiftly, “we have debated enough. You do not wish
to accept my proposal.”

“And have this rascally Bishop running to my house to see you?” She
was restfully silent. “And have his sneaking priests,” stormed Durand,
“spying around among my men?”

She turned her face half away. “Don’t conjure up foolish things,” she
said, lifting her shoulders.

“See here,” flamed Durand--a new and angry thought crossed his
mind--“has Henry Janeway had a hand in this scheme?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, quite sure now of her ground.

“Did he help put you up to this?” demanded Durand.

“Mr. Janeway advised me strongly not to do what I have just done.”

“Of course not,” retorted Durand. “A bird to pluck in hand is worth a
dozen in the bush. Janeway wants his fifty-per-cent fee right now out
of the money you’re getting from me!”

Her attitude, her involuntary shrinking with cold impatience, expressed
her indifference to his temper and threats. She looked at him without
an effort. “What have I to do with all this?” she asked coldly. “You
will not take me under the conditions I have named.”

“Conditions be damned! Will you live with me and play the dutiful
chicken as you never would play it before?”

“No!”

“No!”

Turning, with a quick breath, from his presence, Louise waited for
nothing more. As if to escape the air, she hastened to the door of the
antechamber from which she had come. With her hand on the knob, and
with the door ajar, she turned toward him for the last time. “Good
night!” she murmured swiftly and, passing out, closed the door behind
her.




CHAPTER XXIV

THE LIPS ARE THE LIPS OF THE BISHOP, BUT THE VOICE IS THE VOICE OF ST.
PAUL


Confused by the surprising proposal of his wife, uncertain as to his
wisdom in bluntly rejecting it, and more than ever under the sway of
his violent temper, Durand, upset by the abrupt ending of the interview
and by the unexplained light that shone in Louise’s eyes as she left
him, caught up his hat and started for the hall door. He flung it
rudely open, only to find himself confronted by Janeway.

It was an awkward encounter. Janeway was never in worse mood. The
strain of his suspense showed in his flushed face, and he spoke the
hardest of greetings. “Good evening, Durand.”

With the words he continued to advance, and in effect backed Durand
into the room. Stepping aside to make way for the intrusion, Durand
answered sharply: “You can have the room to yourself!”

He tried to pass out. Janeway obstructed him. “It’s large enough for
two,” he said.

The words and manner of the lawyer were too charged with aggressiveness
to mistake. “What’s your game?” demanded Durand in a loud voice.

“Mrs. Durand,” said Janeway, and he seemed to regain in part his
habitual restraint, “has had some questions to put to you to-night----”

“Questions,” retorted Durand, “that mean another capitalistic fee for
her high-minded legal adviser!”

“It won’t make any difference to me in fees whether you do what she
asked or not. But before I see her, I want to know what answer you gave
her. Will you tell me?”

“No.”

The violent refusal did not stir Janeway. As the storm gathered, he
gained better control of himself. “There are good reasons, Durand,” he
continued carefully, “for my asking you this before I see her.”

“No reasons that are of the slightest consequence to me,” blustered
Durand.

“One of them _is_ of consequence to you,” persisted Janeway, still
confronting the angry steel master. “If you attempt to take that woman
back and sink her into the licentious hell you train in, I’ll kill you.
Make no mistake, Durand, for I mean it.”

So intense was the instant that neither of the two men noticed a third
person in the hall behind them.

“Curse your impudence!” cried Durand. “It’s time for you and me to
adjust our differences!”

Bishop Marion, on the threshold of the open door, halted, amazed. “Mr.
Janeway!” he exclaimed, in stinging reproach, “have you completely
forgotten yourself? What possible controversy can you have with this
man now? Surely you will withdraw your words.”

“I meant exactly what I said,” declared Janeway, unmoved. “He’s warned.”

“Are you two,” demanded the Bishop, “to stand here in my presence with
murder in your hearts?”

“My words were conditional.” Janeway made a characteristically wrathful
gesture as he spoke. “Let him be guided,” he added, not lowering his
tone on the final words.

“No more words, I beg of you--nor threats,” interposed Bishop Marion.

“Don’t imagine your threats or withdrawals are of any interest to me.
And I’ll thank _you_, Mr. Bishop, to give less attention in the future
to my personal concerns.”

Bishop Marion regarded Durand steadily. “I hope I shall have need in
future to give very much less. Do I hear correctly that you have just
declined to receive back your wife?”

“You do!” Durand pushed the declaration almost to a shout.

If Janeway started, it was imperceptibly; he stood a transfixed
listener to the rapid exchanges.

“Then my interest in your domestic affairs,” returned Bishop Marion,
“ceases from this instant forever.”

“And if you’ve no further threats to offer,” added Durand, looking
savagely at Janeway, “I’ll bid you both good evening.”

Janeway suppressed a laugh. “Good evening, Mr. Durand,” he said, making
way as Durand strode from the room; then he turned keenly on the
Bishop. “He has refused?”

“He has.”

“Then where do we stand?”

The Bishop regarded him gravely. “We have crossed a great gulf.”

“Where is Mrs. Durand?”

“With my sister and Miss Durand. I will find her and bring her in.”
And, speaking, Bishop Marion passed at once into the anteroom.

Stalking to the Bishop’s office for Simms and Judge Harrison, Durand
ran into Simms, looking for him. Simms, much excited, took him by the
arm. “Stay there half a minute in the office with Harrison, Bob,” he
whispered hurriedly. “I’ve uncovered something. I must move quick.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Durand, with an epithet of disgust.

“Never mind what I mean. Do as I tell you!”

“What’s up?”

Simms was not tractable. “You’ll know soon enough, if I don’t get
action. Do as I tell you.” He pushed Durand into the office and
hastened toward the reception-room. In it he encountered Janeway.

“Look here!” exclaimed Simms. “What’s this story I hear from Harrison
about you and Louise Durand?”

“What do you hear?” asked Janeway.

“Why, that you’re going to marry her! Man, isn’t there bad blood enough
already between you and Bob Durand?”

“There never was less.”

“She’s a Catholic. _She_ won’t marry you.”

“How do you know?”

“Know? Why, damn it, man, I’m a Catholic myself.”

“You a Catholic?” Contempt could convey nothing more than the even
words carried. “Well”--Janeway paused in his studied scorn--“somebody’s
got to be persecuted; I suppose it might as well be the Catholics as
anybody else.”

“That’s all right,” flared Simms, “but I’ll tell _you_ there’s a few
things you can put over a jury that you can’t put over the outfit that
runs this house.”

“I haven’t taken a degree yet in the Canon Law of the Church,” remarked
Janeway composedly. “But I think I can qualify pretty soon.”

“Bob Durand,” declared Simms, “will fight to the death your marrying
Louise.”

Janeway only continued to bait the exasperated attorney. “You wouldn’t
help him make trouble for me, would you, Simms?”

Simms puffed out. “I’m his lawyer, Henry,” he said warningly. “I’ll
stand by him, remember that.”

“Do,” counselled Janeway, as Simms again started into the hall. “I’ve
beaten you both before. I may do it again.”

It was only a moment before Louise stood in the anteroom door with
Bishop Marion. Janeway clasped her hands. They were icy.

“Was that Simms here with you just now?” asked Louise anxiously. “What
was he saying?”

Janeway laughed with the spirit of a boy. “He said Durand would never
let you marry me.”

“What did you say?”

“That I shouldn’t ask his permission.” He turned to the Bishop. “Now we
are here with you together, tell us: Where do we stand?”

Bishop Marion, cognizant of the excitement of the two before him, yet
lost nothing of his seriousness. “Mr. Janeway,” he said, “the problem
you laid before me with this child is a very old one--and as long as
humanity endures and men and women turn to the Church of God, that
problem will call for merciful answer. St. Paul”--he spoke now to
Louise--“found himself confronted by cases precisely like yours. And
for those difficult cases he laid down a great law--the Magna Charta in
favor of the Christian faith--the law that I apply to you to-night. It
is this:

“Where one party to a pagan marriage becomes a Christian, she is
bound by natural justice to live with her pagan partner as his wife,
_provided_ that partner permits the untrammelled practice of her
religion, and does not compel her or tempt her to lead a sinful life.
But St. Paul required that on these points the Christian spouse, before
breaking the bond between them, should interpellate her husband. This
you have done.”

“If that’s St. Paul’s law, it’s good law and good common sense,”
interposed Janeway with emphasis.

“Your husband,” continued the Bishop, addressing Louise, “has refused
the assurance you had the right to demand. I say to you, therefore,
Louise, that in the sight of the Catholic Church you are no longer
bound in your marriage to Robert Durand.”

“Then,” exclaimed Janeway tensely, “that dread barrier falls! Louise! I
renew my suit!”

Gertrude hastened into the room from the antechamber, almost dragging
Judge Harrison after her. The Judge looked as close to bewildered as
he could ever be caught, and, glancing uncertainly from one to another
of the three in the room, clung to the dead cigar in his fingers; it
seemed, in the confusing circumstances, as if it might prove his best
friend. Gertrude was at no loss for greetings. “Oh, this is where you
are!” she exclaimed. Louise ran to her. “Gertrude!” she cried in a low
voice, “I’m free!”

Harrison walked toward Janeway and the Bishop, and looked from one to
the other. “If I’ve no business here,” he suggested calmly, “I shall
hope somebody will tell me so.”

“But you have!” exclaimed Janeway. “I want you here. Louise is free!”

Harrison regarded the men before him benevolently.

“Well,” he observed, in leisurely fashion, “I shan’t ask just now how
it’s been done; I hope to hear some time in the future. I had it fixed
in my own mind that Janeway would come to grief this time,” he said to
the Bishop. “I couldn’t see any other way out. But I never let on to
Simms. I told him a few minutes ago I didn’t know the rules of this
particular game; but whatever they were, I considered it a bet to play
Janeway to win.”

“No, no!” interrupted Janeway hastily. “Not Janeway to win. But St.
Paul to hand down a great law--and a just judge to administer it,”
he said, laying a hand on the sleeve of the Bishop. “Now,” he added,
turning to Gertrude, “set our wedding-day!”

Gertrude took the remark seriously. “Oh, let it be set quick! Give no
chance for hatred or revenge to defeat your happiness!”

Louise spoke to Bishop Marion, as if again to hear that the gyves had
fallen from her wrists. “And my marriage bond to my former husband--is
it now absolutely broken?” she asked, looking for confirmation to her
protector.

The Bishop alone had remained calm. He turned kindly eyes on his eager
questioner. “I have said you are free,” he replied slowly. “But to
say, at this moment, that your marriage bond to your former husband is
absolutely broken would be to say too much.”

Janeway started. He looked, in effect, apoplectic. “What!” he burst
out. “After all this sacrifice, all this humiliation--her marriage bond
is not absolutely broken! What, in God’s name, Bishop Marion, do you
mean?”

“I mean,” answered the Bishop, choosing his words, “there is but one
way--only one--completely to sever that bond.”

A question rose like a flash to Janeway’s lips. “What’s that way?”

“Your marriage bond to Robert Durand”--Bishop Marion addressed
Louise--“becomes forever severed the moment you become the wife of
another man.”

Janeway whirled toward her. “Then, Louise!” he exclaimed, “for the love
of heaven, become my wife now, here, this minute!”

Louise looked from Gertrude to Janeway, and back at Bishop Marion, to
grasp the meaning of his astonishing words.

The Bishop refused to become excited. “That privilege, my child,” he
added, looking at Louise, “is yours, if you wish it. You are absolutely
free to act.”

The sound of voices, raised in argument, floated in from the hall. “Mr.
Simms,” said Gertrude, alarmed, “was in the office when I called Uncle
Sidney out, talking awfully loud to a white-haired priest--about who
could get married and who couldn’t.”

Bishop Marion smiled. “It must be dear old Father Breton--who is as
deaf as a post.”

Janeway caught Louise’s hands. “Can you ask more than what Bishop
Marion tells you?” he said earnestly. “We can protect ourselves now
from every peril of the revengeful duplicity of another. She looked
at him bewildered. Louise!” he pleaded. “God of Heaven, don’t you
understand?”

His words shook her from her thoughts. “Henry,” she cried, low and
affectionately, “I understand. But I can’t be married _this minute_!
I’ve made no preparations, no, no--nothing of any kind.” She turned in
confusion to Gertrude. “I didn’t expect to get _married_ to-night!”

Janeway saw her dismay. He held her hands before him and spoke
reassuringly. “Louise! I ask it only for our happiness. Don’t you wish
to make that safe?”

She looked at him with the simplest faith. “I wish to reward all
your patience,” she said, “to repay all your kindness. Above all, I
do want--if you really wish it--to make you happy, if I can.” She
hesitated. “But I _can’t_ get married without _any_ notice, Henry!”

Janeway drew her a little apart. “Dearest, I understand perfectly your
delicacy of feeling. Go home with Gertrude; but be married now. Receive
me as your husband in your own good time--when you like.”

She opened her eyes wide. “Oh, but I shouldn’t like that at all!” she
said. “I want you to be my husband when I marry you. But I haven’t had
one minute’s notice!”

The voice of Simms, struggling with Father Breton, strengthened
Janeway’s last appeal. “They are at our heels, Louise! I implore you,
consent!”

She turned to the Bishop. “What must we do, Bishop Marion, to get
married now?”

“Are you sure you wish it--now?” he asked.

“Henry says so,” faltered Louise. “Yes, I’m sure--if Henry is!” And she
joined uneasily in the laughter started by her words.

“Then to the chapel,” said Bishop Marion. “Father Smyth is there. You,
Judge Harrison, and you, Miss Durand, as witnesses.”

Judge Harrison looked nonplussed. He laid down his cigar and addressed
himself gravely to Gertrude and Louise. “You will have to stand by
me,” he said aside. “Elizabeth is missing all this; when she hears it,
she’ll never believe I was no more than an innocent bystander. I look
to you to protect me, girls.”

Bishop Marion threw open the chapel doors.




CHAPTER XXV

IN THE LAST HOUR


“You’re coming in with us, Bishop?” Janeway turned with the question to
Bishop Marion, who stood in the reception-room, waiting to close the
doors behind the wedding party as it passed into the chapel.

The Bishop thought not. “My guests are not all gone yet. It may be
better that I remain here a few moments.” Closing the door of the
chapel, he crossed the room and opened the door into the hall, where
Durand’s voice was plainly to be heard berating Simms.

“I don’t believe they’re here at all,” he was saying testily. “You’ve
made a fine mess! First you tell me he can’t marry her; then you tell
me he’ll marry her to-night! I’ll block that if I have to eat my words
every day for ten years. You’re a bungler, Simms.”

“I?” exclaimed Simms. “Don’t talk to me, Durand. You’ve queered
everything I’ve done from the start to keep you out of the hole!”

Bishop Marion walked forward to the bay window, raised the front shade
and looked out into the street.

“Janeway’s beaten you at every turn,” retorted Durand, with
bitterness, as the two men came down the hall. “Now he’s got half my
surplus and my wife besides. You’re a great big windbag, Simms.”

“Look here! While you’re ranting, you’re getting beaten worse and
worse. I tell you they’re here in this house, and if you don’t see her
and fix it up with her, you’re beat forever!” With Durand sullenly
following, Simms walked brusquely into the reception-room and pounded
the call-bell on the table furiously. “Where are the infernal servants
here?”

Bishop Marion spoke from the window, where he had stood until now
unnoticed. “Whom,” he asked calmly, “do you wish to see, Mr. Simms?”

Simms whirled on him; known to the belligerent lawyer only as a man of
peace, the Bishop seemed a safe outlet for his smarting ill-temper. “We
want to see you,” he announced stridently. “Robert Durand wants to see
his wife at once. Your servant started off to find her and never came
back.”

The Bishop looked undisturbed at Durand. “Mr. Durand,” he said, in the
same unmoved tone, “has seen his wife to-night.”

Durand cut off anything Simms could say. “I knew nothing then about
this last conspiracy you’re a party to--to make her Janeway’s wife!
This is your trick, is it?” demanded Durand furiously, facing the
Bishop. “Posing with your long fingers and oily tongue as an apostle
of matrimonial purity, and attempting to marry a divorced woman to a
crooked lawyer!”

Simms felt that he, too, should register, in the interest of high
thinking and right living, his emphatic protest. “It’s an outrage,
Bishop Marion!” he thundered. “A scandal to religion for a man holding
an--er--honored office, a position of--er--er--hierarchical trust--to
lend himself to such a damnable proceeding! I couldn’t believe my ears
when I heard it! You make me ashamed of the Church I was baptized in!”

The Bishop did not seem deeply stirred. He looked at one and the other
of the two men who faced him, as each spoke. But though his demeanor
was restrained, the expression of his eyes, as Simms continued to hurl
condemnation at him, changed.

“And have you the audacity, Simms,” he said deliberately, “to stand
before me and talk of scandal to religion, in the face of the life you
live and the example you set in this community? You,” repeated the
Bishop, with gathering indignation, “born and reared in the Catholic
faith, yet whose face is never seen inside a Catholic church! You,
public profligate and reprobate that you are--a reproach to your
baptism--have you the effrontery to accuse _me_ of giving scandal? I
say to you, Simms”--the voice of the gray-haired prelate shook with
the castigation. He pointed his finger at the astounded attorney. “I
say to you, this blinded pagan at your side”--the finger fixed on
Durand--“sunken in vice as he is, is less guilty, in the eyes of God,
than you! He has never fallen, as you have, from decency and restraint!
Wretched man! Scandal of your faith! When Sodom and Gomorrah are
weighed--how--God help you--shall you be judged?

“And you, Durand! This is the creature you have enlisted to help you
persecute an unoffending woman! How are you to be named when men speak
of men?”

Durand was able to recover himself first. “You’re a hypocrite!” he
shouted. “You’ve exploited my domestic troubles to line your own
pockets. I tell you, my wife offered to-night to come back and live
with me. I want no abuse at your hands, no threats from you; I’ll hold
you personally responsible for detaining her!”

“Then I say to you here and now, Durand,” and the Bishop, with flashing
eyes, laid his words like whip-lashes on the husband’s shoulders, “that
your pagan marriage, with its iniquities you have wallowed in, and
into which you tried to drag your innocent wife, is dissolved! I say
to you that before the State and before God you have no wife! I invoke
to-night for Louise Durand what your own intolerable conduct has given
her--THE PAULINE PRIVILEGE! And the last remnant of any bond binding
her to you breaks this night when she becomes the true wife of Henry
Janeway!”

“And I say to you!” cried Durand, his confidence shaken but his
effrontery unabated, “in the presence of this witness, that I’ll make
the promises you and she require. I’ll take my wife back and leave her
free and untrammelled in the practice of her religion. And I demand her
at your hands!”

The folding doors of the chapel were thrown open by Father Smyth.
Louise walked out at Janeway’s side. The glow suffusing her face told
the Bishop all he needed to know. “Your professions are too late,” he
said sternly to Durand. “Neither God nor man gives you claim on this
woman now; she is Henry Janeway’s wife.”

“It’s conspiracy!” blustered Simms. “Plain conspiracy! We’ll see what
the courts have to say about this! Come, Mr. Durand.” The two were
starting from the room when Janeway spoke. “Hold on, Simms. You said
you had a copy of that settlement document with you. Give it to me.”

Simms drew the agreement from his pocket. Durand interposed sharply.
“Do nothing of the kind, Simms. Give that paper to me!”

Between the two fires Simms hesitated. He looked from one to the other
of the men, afraid of offending Durand, but knowing they could not
bluff Janeway. He turned on the steel master placatingly. “Mr. Durand,
this is in accordance with the court record,” he said, trying to
explain. “It merely itemizes the sums and securities stipulated in the
settlement. It would do no good to withhold it. The court has entered
the decree.”

“Curse the decree!” exclaimed Durand, losing what little temper he
had left. “I’ll have it annulled. This is fraud. I’ll claim my wife!”
Janeway only laughed gently. “Give me that paper!” persisted Durand in
wrath.

“Bob, I tell you it’s no possible use,” objected Simms tartly. “The
court will enforce it, anyway!”

“Simms,” said Janeway, holding out his hand, with a tone of finality,
“deliver that paper.” Simms reluctantly handed it to him. Janeway
turned to his wife. “Louise,” he said, “this is yours.” She took the
agreement, looking at him inquiringly. “When I exacted it,” he went on,
“I believed, or feared, you might face the world without an income,
without the training to earn a living, without a protector to do it for
you; my hopes, not my fears, have been realized. It is now my privilege
to lay my earnings in your hands for your comfort and protection. I am
your income.” He pointed to the paper in her hand. “This shield from
the hardships of the world, rightfully yours, is no longer a necessity.
What will you do with it?”

She looked at her husband. “It was your solicitude, Henry, that
provided this.” She held the paper in her open hand. “I never insisted
on it,” she added.

“Simple justice entitled you to it,” said Janeway. “It restores to
you what is left of your father’s estate. And exacts, in addition, a
substantial sum for the humiliations and injustices you have suffered.
But as money you no longer need it. What will you now do with it?”

Without hesitation she put the paper in her husband’s hand. “You,” she
replied, “will know best what to do with it.”

Janeway, pausing as he looked at the paper, regarded her with
seriousness. “Do you give me this, Louise,” he asked, “to do with
exactly as I please?”

“To do with exactly as you please, Henry.”

“Then I will say to Mr. Simms and Mr. Durand,” continued Janeway, “and
to this little world of Fond du Lac, that my wife will not participate
in the surplus of the twelve-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week Durand
Corporation. I hope personally to provide for the necessities, and, if
possible, the luxuries of Mrs. Henry Janeway. The property representing
in this document your father’s estate is properly restored to you. As
to the added securities pledged herein by Robert Durand, they would
make, it seems plain to me, a fitting foundation for a children’s
hospital. Persuade, if you can, Bishop Marion and Judge Harrison to act
as your trustees in such an undertaking, Louise. If they can be made
to accept, the community will know that your trust is to be faithfully
carried out. And I feel sure now that Bishop Marion will excuse Mr.
Simms and Mr. Durand from further participation in the happiness of
this evening.”

Without attempting further retort, Durand turned brusquely on his heel,
and, followed by Simms--Janeway still eying them--left the room and the
house.

Bishop Marion took one of Louise’s and one of Janeway’s hands. “And our
little ‘conspiracy,’” he said, “is dissolved.”

“No,” responded Janeway, clasping the Bishop’s hand in both his own,
and unleashing for the moment the intensity of his feelings. “It’s
not dissolved yet; I hope it never will be dissolved. I hope I may
always retain the loyal friendship that has brought me my wife”--he
looked at her--“and the happiness that is ours now. You have guided us
patiently through seas uncharted to me, into a haven of safety. You
have established a new home----”

Bishop Marion’s self-consciousness would stand no more. “You are too
grateful,” he protested, “for the little I have done.” He looked at
Louise. “It was only your right, my dear child, that I have given you;
and what I have done for you, I would have done--indeed, have done--for
the simplest of my flock. I rejoice with you both, honestly, in your
new-found happiness. And, I repeat, our ‘conspiracy’----”

“Do not repeat, Bishop,” interrupted Janeway, “that our ‘conspiracy,’
as Mr. Durand terms it, is dissolved. My best friend”--he indicated
Judge Harrison, who, with an unlighted cigar between his fingers,
tried to appear somewhat at ease--“is here witness that I have entered
into a new and solemn engagement, with the oldest living member of
the natural-contract family--matrimony. I am going to try to make one
woman happy, trusting to find in her happiness my own. It is you”--he
addressed Bishop Marion--“who have surrendered her into my keeping--to
you I must in some measure be responsible. Give us, at least, your
blessing, that in what I undertake I may not fail!”


THE END




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


The original text had a missing word in the sentence starting “Wrapped
in thought, Janeway, while Louise made comment”, on page 282. The
omission of “no” before “comment” has been retained in this edition.

Missing quotation marks restored and obvious typographical errors
corrected.




*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARRIAGE VERDICT ***


    

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.


START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg
electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when
you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
    other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
    whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
    of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with this eBook or online
    at www.gutenberg.org. If you
    are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
    of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
  
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works
provided that:

    • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
        the use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method
        you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
        to the owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has
        agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
        Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
        within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
        legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
        payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
        Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
        Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
        Literary Archive Foundation.”
    
    • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
        you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
        does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
        License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
        copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
        all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
        works.
    
    • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
        any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
        electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
        receipt of the work.
    
    • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
        distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
    

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516,
Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.