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!”