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!”