DAY-DREAMS

Turtle Island in midsummer combined, so Judge Harrison, who had long owned it, maintained, the coolness of the lake with the seclusion of the wilderness, and possessed for its owner yet another prime attraction--it afforded for him, he said, with a complete change of air and thought, a unique “access- and inaccess-ibility.” A few hours’ run in the launch--and the Judge’s launch was not considered, by his younger relatives, fast--was more than enough to cover the distance from the Fond du Lac pier.

The island, too, was just large enough for a nine-hole golf-course, and this added, for the Judge, the crowning attraction of the little speck of green in the wide expanse of blue waters. The golf-course was never, in Janeway’s estimation, in playable condition, but for the Judge, who talked golf more than he played, this was not a vital defect. His summer guests were too courteous to complain of the greens, and these reached in the end a condition in which, as Kennedy said, there were none to complain of. But Judge Harrison’s clubs were faithfully carried to and from Fond du Lac in the launch, and if by any chance they were forgotten, the boat was peremptorily turned back. This made the family alert to be sure they were aboard.

Under the dozen Norway pines--and they were good ones--at the north end of the island stood the Harrison cabin--just a roomy, comfortable affair of cedar logs, with a living-room running through the middle. At one end of this room was a rough stone fireplace, and opening on either side of the living-room were bedrooms. The dining-room was entered through archways on both sides of the fireplace, and facing south, overlooked the lake, the beach pleasingly visible not far away.

Mrs. Harrison had taken Louise, of whom she was fond, over to the island when she went with the servants to open the house for the summer. Little as Louise could bear to talk to any one of her marriage experience with Mrs. Harrison’s nephew, the two women came to confidences before very long, and Mrs. Harrison made it very clear that she understood and sympathized.

“Sometimes, Auntie, I think the crudest part of it all is that it has robbed me of faith in all other men,” said Louise one evening, before the fire. “I have to keep saying to myself: ‘They’re all alike--all alike!’”

“My dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Harrison, “if you are forcing yourself to say that, it only shows you haven’t lost faith in men. They _are_ all alike in this, my child--men are creatures of the flesh; we may as well resign ourselves to that fact. Don’t expect to find a normal man without that primal taint in his nature. But they are not all alike; pray that you may find one with consideration enough to think of you first; if such a man loves you, you may be sure of happiness with him. The other kind--the kind that think of their impulse only--you’ve had experience with, poor girl!”

“But sometimes men are the victims of women, Auntie; what kind are they?”

“Both kinds. Their impulses make them the easier victims. But the distinction holds; the one kind deserve our sympathy; the other kind get what they deserve at some vile creature’s hands.”

They talked late--the younger woman beset by difficulties and perplexities--the other experienced in the illusions and grounded in the realities of life; and Louise went to sleep steadied and strengthened in some respects, if still facing the future blindly in others.

* * * * *

On the afternoon following the evening with Bishop Marion, Janeway left Chicago on the three-o’clock train, joined Judge Harrison at Fond du Lac, and Oliver, the Judge’s chauffeur, headed the launch for the island. Mrs. Harrison and Louise were at the little landing pier to greet the arrivals. If there had been any doubt in the minds of the Harrisons as to Janeway’s interest in Louise--and her more carefully measured return of it--there was none after twenty-four hours with their two guests at the island.

For a lover every situation is an opportunity. A mere elevator man on duty in a twenty-story building can make love with complete happiness provided the object of his affections will ride up and down with him--and she will. It is absolutely necessary, however, that the interested pair should, in any situation, have some moments apart from other people. Janeway, after dinner, tried skilfully to draw Louise from the fire before which Judge Harrison, with his slow-burning cigar, had planted himself. But she resisted every appealing hint. Janeway was forced to cease repining and to resign himself to cards indoors, with only the consolation of eying Louise, next to him, somewhat unscrupulously--to her occasional embarrassment--and saying for her benefit whatever the situation might inspire.

In the morning, on his way up from the plunge, he was singing before breakfast. Over the eggs and bacon Mrs. Harrison cautioned him. “I pay no attention to that wretched saying,” he remarked, frankly contemptuous of it. “I learned long ago the wisdom of singing before breakfast. Often it’s the only time of day a man gets a chance to sing. Weep if you have to; sing when you can.” And with hardly a break he suggested, addressing Louise: “Let’s go fishing.”

While Louise parried, Judge Harrison, with contempt for fishermen’s ignorance, growled: “Nothing but perch out there, Janeway.”

Janeway was not disturbed. He disputed the Judge’s dictum, and set up as an authority on island fishing himself.

With Louise, after a decent resistance won over, Janeway disappeared, and when in a sport skirt and under a summer hat she appeared on the porch, Janeway was in the garden with a tin can and a spading fork, digging angleworms.

Louise laughed. “Do you really want to go fishing?” she asked, as she joined him.

“No, do you?”

“No.”

“Then come on!” He struck the fork vigorously into the ground, to desert it then and there. Louise pointed to the tin can. “Those poor worms!” Janeway, drawing his handkerchief from his pocket to dust his fingers, kicked the can over, and with Louise took the path through the woods.

He told her of his talk with the Bishop. Louise, not temperamentally optimistic, got less encouragement than Janeway got out of it. He was conscious of her anxiety. “We shan’t get on without a fight--I don’t expect to,” he declared bluntly. “I never got anything worth while yet without a fight, so I could hardly hope for all of this world and part of the next without one.” He looked hard at her, but Louise was looking, or trying to look, ahead. “Nobody ever handed me anything on a platter,” he went on grimly. “All the bright boys in my town were picked up at one time or another and made protégés of by some big man; no one ever picked me up for a winner; nobody ever seemed to need brains when mine were for sale. I was just a puny, sallow-faced kid. I couldn’t do anything that made other boys famous. I hadn’t even good looks--which are a material asset, even when not backed by brains.”

“But think,” exclaimed Louise, not repressing, for the instant, her feelings, “what you’ve done in your profession! My! If I were you, I should be swollen with pride.”

“No--you’d be thinking of the many things you should have done better. I’ve too often cut down with an axe when I should have thrust with a rapier. And,” he went on, with unabated interest in his failures, “_I_ never could swim across the river. I never could make the ‘first nine’ in baseball. Even in the ‘Turner School,’ the best I ever could do was the ‘Knieweller.’”

“What on earth is the ‘Knieweller’?”

“It would be hard to explain without a turning pole; but it was the easiest of many other ‘wellers’--not nearly so hard as you are.”

“Ah!” She caught her breath with the little exclamation. “Why did you look to a woman so hard to clear the way to?”

Janeway looked at her. “Think of what’s at the end of the way.”

“Have they agreed on a money settlement yet?”

“It’s all over but the quarrelling. You remember Simms decided, under proper pressure, to withdraw his original complaint and immediately substitute an amended complaint, with the objectionable features left out. After a conference last week it was agreed between your attorneys and Durand’s that Judge Bellows--the case is before him--should sit in chambers as an arbitrator to arrive at a final agreement on the property settlement, the deeds and other securities involved in this to be placed in escrow and delivered out at the time of signing the final decree; and that a stipulation of settlement be filed in the divorce proceedings and the final decree come down. This may sound a little confusing to you----”

Louise sighed. “It does.”

“But things are arranged with sinister clarity. Just give me a judge that understands--that’s all I ask.” Janeway paused at a thought. “Whenever Judge Harrison used to hear me say that he would always take the chance to grumble: ‘And a jury that doesn’t understand’--which wasn’t true, but he liked to say so. Anyway, Judge Bellows _does_ understand.”

“How I shrink,” murmured Louise, “from all this divorce disgrace!”

“The disgrace fixes solely on him.”

“And the settlement of all this money on me worries me.”

“The sole reason I’ve insisted on it is because you won’t give me an answer. Say you’ll be my wife and I’ll drop this settlement matter instanter.”

“But independently of any answer to you, I am well able to take care of myself.”

Janeway stopped in the path before her. They had reached the edge of the woods, and were facing the lake and the beach. “Louise,” he asked, “am I your legal adviser or am I not?”

She glanced up with just enough of mischief in her eyes to set his pulses going. “You’re not permanently retained yet. But I haven’t any other,” she added.

“Then this settlement must go through. It’s the merest recompense--inadequate compensation.” They walked along the beach till they found a driftwood log. “I’m finally getting it clear in my mind, Louise,” Janeway continued, as they sat down, “why that fellow pursued you so. Putting two and two together--what I’ve heard of his business affairs from his Uncle Sid and what you’ve told me--he was cold-bloodedly after your money!”

Louise, looking down, was running the hem of her handkerchief between her thumb and finger. Without moving her head, she lifted her eyes to his. “Don’t I get _any_ personal credit?” she asked, in a demure effort to abate his angry intensity.

He was not to be turned from his resentful indictment. “He needed it to tide him over the ‘psychological depression’ that culminated in 1913. He was close to the rocks that year, his uncle says; your money saved him.” Janeway twisted his shoulders in protest. “What a price,” he exclaimed slowly and savagely, “for a girl to pay for the crime of inheriting wealth! What a tragedy--my Louise!

“Durand _is_ ingratiating,” Janeway went on, less tensely. “I remember how genuinely surprised I was the first time he lied to me. One of the treasured watchwords of my corrupted youth was that no man who was a liar could succeed in life. A slavish adherence to that maxim nearly wrecked my early career. First and last, I’ve had to scrap a great deal of copy-book maxim as far as it refers to success in life--or to what men agree to call success. Not a few of the great exemplars of big business that I know are likewise, if occasion demands, extremely able-bodied liars--Durand’s no worse than the others. _His_ crowning villainy was that he broke your heart!”

“No!” interposed Louise, disclaiming instantly. “He could humiliate me, he could torture my feelings--but he couldn’t break my heart. It never belonged to him. You--be careful of it--will you?”

He looked at her so suddenly it almost took her breath. Then she laughed at his gravity. “When I do break it--” he said grimly----

“When you do break it,” she echoed, cutting off his words, imitating his frown and mockingly solemn.

“--let me drink the poison from your hand.”

The moment seemed to bring a care-free happiness. “I can’t promise that,” she objected. “I might need it myself.” She pointed to the clump of willow shoots at her hand. “Cut me a switch.”

When he handed it to her she began stripping the leaves from it. “Whatever _possessed_ you,” she demanded, turning on him a Lilliputian frown of her own, “to follow a luckless creature like me down that day to that swamp? What were you _thinking_ of?”

“I wanted to save you from the fate to which you were headlong rushing.”

“Fate?”

“That of marrying a rebuilt hero of France. I didn’t want to see you tied to a damaged _poilu_.”

“My heavens, would you wish me on a poor _poilu_? Couldn’t you do better than that for a slightly respectable client? But you shan’t make fun of the poor _poilus_; they’re too sacred.”

“Well, then, to one of those cigarette-waisted barons that drain our country of its wealth. Only the other day I had to draw a marriage-settlement contract for an innocent old candy maker who had amassed too many millions in Chicago real estate. A third of his fortune had to go to a puttering Frenchman for marrying his silly daughter.”

“And she may have been dear at the price!”

“But in your case I was resolved not to see your respected father’s estate--if you could ever get your hands on it again--go to feed the flower of a foreign aristocracy--especially”--he coughed slightly to point his remark--“if there was a chance to salvage any part of it for a poor but dishonest American.”

He talked to her of himself, as if to put himself as honestly as he could before her. Something in his confidences, and especially in his odd voice, always drew her to him; some intonation, some note, some manner of his saying even little things, broke each time like a rude wave against the barriers of her scepticism. In spite of herself, she believed; sincerity seemed to echo from his words--though she knew how perfectly able he was to conceal his thoughts. “It’s not that I deceive people,” he had said once to her, in defense, “I only allow them to deceive themselves; when they wake it’s too late--I’m gone!”

And when he spoke her name as he had only now--from the depths of an emotion she had never realized could be in a man’s heart--she felt helpless--almost marvelled at his restraint when alone with her, for she dreaded how an unguarded moment might have overwhelmed her own. “Can you wonder,” she managed to say, with an attempt at coldness, as she spoke again of her husband, “that I have no faith in men?”

“But you still _can_ have faith in a _man_. Point your finger at me and say: ‘You are the man!’”

“I’d rather not take a dollar from Robert Durand,” she said. “I’ve suffered so much at his hands, I hate even to think of him. At first he was so fussy about me, so considerate--and then gradually--think of having to live through it! The protestations--and the neglect!

“And then”--her voice tightened--“there came a moment when I knew--really knew--I was no longer first with him. What a moment! Another woman! And I no longer preferred--just cast off, like a discarded glove. How I struggled that night with shame and rage! How little I understood, that night; how little I realized what a foundation of sand my house of pride had been built on”--she stopped.

“Sometimes,” said Janeway in hard tones, “we are compelled, or think we are, to cast pearls before swine. It is, of course, trying business. But occasionally, when all else has failed and the pearls are definitely discredited, the swine may still be moved by a certificate from some one whom they are used to regarding as an authority, attesting the market value of the gems. When Durand finds out I’ve won you, he’ll burst with rage.”

“But you can’t know,” she exclaimed, as if the brand were still hot on her heart, “the abasement of that first moment when a woman realizes it all--you who always, everywhere, come first!”

He checked her with explosive energy. “Don’t say that!”

“It’s true--you always succeed.”

“Don’t say that, Louise!” he exclaimed in protest. “I couldn’t count my failures.”

“How can you honestly say that?”

“What you count successes have been wrung from men that hated me. They had no choice but to concede them. They needed me to put through their schemes. But, Louise--_you_ didn’t need me to make money for _you_--_you_ didn’t have to like me--it all just came out of your heart! I can’t understand yet how you could listen to me! I’ve always thought the finest instinct a woman has is her love for her offspring--the flesh of her flesh, the bone of her bone. How in the name of God she can love a man is a little too deep yet for me--no doubt He understands it.”

“You would understand it,” said Louise, “if you understood our vanity and weakness. We’re very common clay. Perhaps that’s why you love us.”

“Do you know,” he asked suddenly, “what I count my one success in life--my only success in life?”

She turned away, unwilling or unable either to respond or to bear his look--for his answer to his question was already foreshadowed in his tone and manner--just whipping her foot lightly with the willow. “My one success,” he repeated, not alone with a lover’s ardor but with a deeper conviction, “is that I come first with you! Nothing else--I count nothing else! Oh!” he exclaimed, “if I could have met you ten years ago--if you could have loved me ten years ago!”

She laughed softly. “Barely sixteen!”

“Yes,” he declared energetically, unabashed. “When you were barely sixteen! What I could have saved you!”

“I don’t know whether I could have loved anybody then--I was such a fool! But now I can at least make my way in the world. I can earn my own living.”

He was gently tolerant. “What a picture you’d make, earning your own living--you’re so big and strong!”

She held her ground. “I could do it.”

“How, for instance?”

“I could do lots of things--teach.”

Janeway was laughing at her. “Do you think you could possibly find any one to teach that knows less than you do?”

Louise blazed. “Why, the idea!”

“I mean, less of the world.”

“I could sew.”

“Kimonos? Shirts? Pajamas? Louise!”

“Oh, you needn’t laugh. I could do lots of things.”

He was thinking, as his eyes rested on her, of a remark Harrison, in speaking of Durand, had once made to him; it was the first time he had ever heard of Louise. “Bob has a very bright wife,” the Judge had said, “a California girl. Elizabeth says she’s too thin to be beautiful. But she makes a hit with me. She’s got more brains than Bob,” the Judge had, in his staccato fashion, blurted out in conclusion.

As she sat before Janeway now in the morning sun, the thinness Harrison had criticised had gone, and the interval had given her the color--sometimes high--denied by earlier years.

“I’ll tell you what you could do,” suggested Janeway. “Write beauty hints to women for yellow newspapers. If you could only tell women how to charm merely by doing nothing--the way you do! But you couldn’t do even that. Charm is incommunicable.

“No; while I live, outside of any question of settlement from Durand, and whether you marry me or not, you shall never have to earn your own living. At the least, I can and will be responsible for your subsistence. There’s no law, human or divine, against my providing for you.”

“I couldn’t take money from you if I didn’t marry you.”

He closed his hands as he looked at her. “Louise, I’ll get money to you if I have to break into your room at night like a thief, and slip it into your purse by stealth. And I’ll bend above you as you sleep, to steal the fragrance of your breath!”

“Henry!”

“I’ll originate a new burglary; I’ll become an unheard-of criminal for you. Unlooked-for returns shall come to you, strange dividends reach you unawares; I’ll be behind every man you turn to for a position; mysterious salaries shall arise on every hand. But every man you speak to will fall in love with you----”

“They haven’t yet!”

“--then I’ll strangle each one in turn the way I’d have strangled Durand one day when he mentioned your name--if Simms hadn’t pushed him out of the room.

“You earn your living! The only way you could ever work hard enough to earn it would be in keeping me from providing it.”

“Do you know you’ll break my heart with kindness?”

“If you call that kindness, what’s to come would, as Jim Kennedy might say, reduce your pulsing muscle to the merest fragment, believe me. Louise, do you ever think of it--the mark of this world to-day, whichever way you turn, is unhappiness? Everywhere it’s unhappiness. Frankly, I want to escape it. I don’t feel I’m responsible for the present infernal state of things. But I do feel, with a horrible conviction, that you’re my only way out.”

She was gazing out on the lake. “Don’t forget,” she said, “that any one capable of great happiness cannot hope to escape great suffering--they go together. Oh, you’re very patient with my wretched difficulties. I know I ought to give you an answer.”

“Not till you give me the right one. But, Louise,” he added, “remember--there is a time for all things. Remember, the time for all things passes. Perhaps I’ve waited too long for my happiness. But when I think of you, I say to myself: ‘No. God meant I should wait for her.’ Only--don’t let the cup slip from our lips!”

“How _can_ I ever marry you with this stone wall of divorce between us?”

“We must smash through any wall that parts us. I could make you outface this cringing, contemptible world; I could force it to your feet. It’s only your religion--this strange, uncompromising, incomprehensible, human and unhuman high court of Christianity that keeps you from me. Louise! Will you sacrifice me for an ideal?”

“It is not an ideal--it’s a faith. If you take it from me--if I lose it--I lose myself; I am lost.”

“Why did you ever put such a mountain as this Catholic Church between us? Why?”

“I turned to its hope to escape this world. I knew I was raising an impassable barrier against remarrying. What had marriage brought me but humiliation, wretchedness, sorrow, shame!”

“Damn men, anyway!” he exclaimed. “What were they made for?”

“How could I but detest it?” she asked. “How could I foresee such a moment as this? Forget me! Give me up!”

“Louise, I can’t give you up! You can give up what stands between us. Join some other church--turn Mohammedan, Hindu, Mormon--I don’t care a hang what you are. Only, for God’s sake don’t throw _me_ over!”

“And what manner of creature should I be, if I now denied the Truth? I could never be the woman you hope for--the woman to make you happy, as you deserve to be. Had I never known this faith, it would be different. If I abandon it now, I lose, with its hope, even my self-respect. I am a grovelling apostate--worse than this low pagan I have put out of my life!”

“Stop, Louise!”

“Give me up. It is hopeless!”

Janeway rose to his feet. “You call it hopeless; be it so. For me it is not hopeless--nothing is hopeless. I will grapple with this to the death. I will study your faith till I know it better than you know it. I will besiege your priests till they run from the sight of me. I’ll wrestle with them till they gasp for breath! I will grope for every clew, clutch at every straw; hope, while I live, against hope. I will _never_ give you up. After you see Marion, I will talk to him till one of us drops dead. I will go to Rome itself!”

Louise rose in turn. She could not conceal her emotion as she regarded him. “Surely, if they could hear you now they would find a way.”

“I mean it. I will hear, if I must, from the lips of the Pope himself what you dread to ask. He himself shall tell me that because you’ve become a Christian you’ve condemned yourself to death in life, a woman neither married nor unmarried, a wife and no wife, a victim of the brutality of man, and a sacrifice on the altar of an all-merciful Christianity! I’m going to fight single-handed for my right to live, to breathe, to have my being in the woman I believe God created for me--as I believe He created me for her. Louise, wish me luck----”

She threw away her switch as she looked straight at him and rose to go. “I’d wish you, if I could, into heaven!”