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.”