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.”