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.”