DISQUIETING NEWS

“I’ve been practising in a new court,” said Janeway to Judge Harrison on the following afternoon. The Harrisons had returned from the island, and the two men were sitting on the Judge’s terrace.

Harrison looked sceptically at his companion. “What court is new to you?”

“An ecclesiastical court.” The Judge’s face showed he was still in the dark. “I suppose you know,” continued Janeway, without the slightest prelude, “or suspect, anyway--that I am in love with Louise Durand.” As a matter of conventional courtesy, Janeway waited for any comment the Judge might make on a subject that must always be considered a delicate confidence. It was not that Janeway expected a comment. He did not; his surmise that none would be forthcoming was correct--Judge Harrison’s face was non-committal. Janeway, however, knew that mask perfectly well; and knew pretty well most of the time what was going on behind it. He accordingly continued his disclosure without hesitation or embarrassment. “You know she has become a Catholic,” he went on, “and that makes the present question of her remarriage an extremely difficult one. I have appealed--or we have--to Bishop Marion, and as I represent the plaintiff, and _am_ the plaintiff, in the case, I am considerably exercised over the outcome. You don’t seem in a hurry to wish me happiness.”

Judge Harrison roused himself. “Nevertheless, I do wish you happiness, Janeway. You deserve it. It’s the elusiveness of the thing I am thinking of. What company, for instance, would undertake to insure happiness in this life? Yet we are everywhere confronted with the spectacle of those about us attempting individually that which transcends even corporate recklessness. So--so,” he mused, in the German fashion. “You and Louise, eh? Well, it wasn’t very hard to see that over at the island the other day. Elizabeth seems to approve, so it would do no good for me to withhold my consent. You know what I think of Louise; she’s fine; as fine as they make ’em. In the Catholic end of it you’re up against a pretty stiff proposition.”

“Fairly stiff.”

“Can you make the grade?”

Janeway drew himself back, after his manner when facing a problem. “I wish I knew,” he said. “Always before I have had enough detachment, even in the greatest difficulties, to keep from worrying; not so, this time.”

“My advice to people that worry is not to worry,” said Harrison magisterially. “My advice to people that don’t worry is to worry. At Catalina once I met a man on a glass-bottom boat-trip, a stationmaster for the Erie Road at 23d Street. He was a Jew--the first I ever ran across working for a railroad--they know better--though I’ve met more than one that owned a railroad. He was a veteran in the service and knew Harriman, Mrs. Harriman, Roosevelt--everybody prominent in New York. He was worrying for fear he should lose his job. I told him he ought to be in no danger, and advised him not to worry. He looked at me with all the worldly wisdom of his race in his anxious eyes. ‘Mister,’ he said impetuously, ‘that’s all right; you mean well. But, let me tell you--in New York the men that don’t worry are sitting in the park.’

“After that I saw the wisdom of advising men that don’t worry, to worry. It’s not possible, I suppose, I can help you--briefing, or anything?” suggested Judge Harrison in softly nasal irony.

“You _can_ help a little,” returned Janeway, somewhat to the other man’s surprise. “I’m anxious,” he continued, “to have Durand at Bishop Marion’s house promptly next Monday night at eight o’clock. He’s to be there, you know, to sign the new wage agreement; for another reason, which I need not go into, I hope to see him there on time. You can help by impressing on him the importance of closing with the men at the Bishop’s house next Monday evening, without fail.” Janeway threw emphasis into his words.

“Conspiracy,” muttered the Judge, chewing calmly his unlighted cigar.

“A new rôle,” retorted Janeway, “for you.”

“I’ll undertake to have Robert there,” acquiesced Harrison, quite matter-of-factly, “only stipulating that personal violence on the part of the ecclesiastical court be barred. What are you trying to do--write a new chapter in the canonical jurisprudence of the Roman Catholic Church?”

“I don’t know,” replied Janeway vaguely, “precisely _what_ I’m trying to do--beyond getting Durand at Bishop Marion’s residence next Monday evening at eight o’clock.”

“I’ll begin wiring to-night,” said Harrison. “I think by Monday we can produce him.”

“Meantime,” remarked Janeway precatorily, “keep the confidence, please; not even Elizabeth, Judge.”

“Not even Elizabeth. And you,” admonished the Judge, “don’t torture yourself anticipating the worst. I’ve spent my life in jumping at conclusions, and most of them have been wrong.”

“You have never failed me in a crisis,” said Janeway simply. “Your friendship and mine is an unclouded one of long standing. I prize it the more because experience has forced me to the conclusion--as it did Shakespeare--that most friendship is feigning.”

“Friendship,” observed the Judge meditatively, “is a community of interests.”

“Or,” suggested Janeway, “a community of tastes?”

“Whatever it _is_,” responded Harrison, “it _ought_ to be a community of principles. Well”--he spoke philosophically--“some one has said, pray as if everything depended on God; act as if everything depended on yourself. Go into the thing to win, Janeway. If the wind gets too high, make for shore in good season. I went out once with an old fisherman in Nantucket. Elizabeth was along. The Sound began to ruffle up. The fisherman wanted to head for home. Elizabeth didn’t want to go in, but he was set very seriously on getting ashore. She urged him to stick it out; quoted a line from the old song, ‘Is not God upon the water, just the same as on the land?’

“‘He is, ma’am, He is,’ responded the old salt, with one eye on Elizabeth and the other on his telltale. ‘I’m free to admit He is. But with the wind settin’ in that particular quarter, ma’am, ’tain’t so much with me a question of where _He_ is as where _I_ am.’”

The Judge continued in gently nasal tones to give Janeway the benefit of his reflections. “I don’t know much about Catholics myself. Elizabeth considers them--taken by and large,” explained the Judge apologetically, “somewhat smelly. But I tell her that will all be remedied when they ‘Gather with the saints at the ri-ver--That flows by the throne of God.’”

Janeway seemed too absorbed to respond. “The only thing I have against them,” Judge Harrison continued calmly, “is that their priests are mostly a--a--queer-looking lot. What?”

This suggestion drew from Janeway the desired rise. He responded in judicial appraisement of the Judge’s observation.

“I used to think so myself! I thought precisely the same thing,” he concurred, with emphasis, “and they _are_--a good many of them--a homely lot. But,” he asked flatly, “what can you do? Did Christ hunt up Apollos when he was looking for apostles? Fishermen are not usually handsome men. Peter wouldn’t get very far in a beauty show. And certainly Paul wasn’t drafted by the Lord because of his manly beauty.

“No,” he went on, with gathering conviction. “I’ve come to the conclusion it’s a bad sign for any religion when its favorite leaders, its clergymen and preachers, are handsome men--men notable for fine, strong features, good physique, and rich, persuasive voices. Such a state of affairs is a result, not a cause. It is due to the fact that a sect has nothing stronger than the personality of attractive men to kindle the interest of its adherents. The cynics grin when a handsome preacher makes a hit; and in this instance the grin has a basis of justification. Compare the picture of the dilettante, delicate-handed, snowy-banded priest held up to scorn by Tennyson, with the common, imperfect, knock-about, rough-and-ready men of the wide-spread Catholic priesthood--dressed in shabby wear; queer-looking, if you like--fat, squatty, angular, thin, just as they come; always comprehensible, usually dependable, no frills, nothing esoteric, just plain, every-day, cold-in-the-head servants of the Most High God. God help the religion whose heroes need to be handsome men!”

Janeway did not see Louise until Thursday. She was in Chicago that morning with Gertrude. Gertrude called Janeway up from Field’s to lunch with them. He found he could not, but clung to the telephone conversation, and at length, by agreeing to send Kennedy as a substitute, got Louise on the wire, and, under the plea of having something important to say, got her to promise, if Gertrude would accompany her, to come over a moment to his office. The two women took a car down-stairs and drove to Adams and Clark. They were received by Kennedy’s secretary and ushered into Janeway’s office. Kennedy was in conference with Janeway.

The conference ceased. “You’re going to lunch with us, Jim,” said Gertrude.

“Second choice, eh?”

“Not with me, silly. I hope you wouldn’t expect to be first with everybody?”

“If I hadn’t found a mistake of a hundred dollars in my favor in my bank-account this morning, I couldn’t do it, anyway.”

“That won’t help much, Jim; we’ve decided to lunch in Michigan Avenue.”

“What are you two fussing about?” asked Louise, turning from her talk with Janeway to get away from his eyes.

Kennedy looked at her. “When you write my epitaph, Mrs. Durand,” he said gravely, “let it be brief: ‘Always short.’ One o’clock, I suppose?”

“What was it important you had to tell me?” asked Louise of Janeway.

“Come over here by the window,” suggested Janeway, leading the way.

“I don’t believe you have a thing,” declared Louise, following him doubtfully. “You don’t act as if you had.”

“It’s something quite important, though not important at this moment. I saw Bishop Marion last night. He asked me to have you bring him that last letter from your aunt regarding your never having been baptized. And I have supplied him with all the other affidavits he has requested concerning the non-baptisms. He seems to attach great importance to that point. I don’t quite see myself what difference it makes; but I’ve won some desperate cases on seemingly inconsequential points.”

Janeway’s secretary appeared at the office door. “Mr. King, Mr. Janeway.”

“I’ll see him in a moment,” said Janeway, as Kennedy and Gertrude passed out into Kennedy’s office.

“Who,” murmured Louise, as the secretary retired, “is Mr. King?”

“Will King is President of the Standard Oil Company. An important thing,” continued Janeway, pursuing his topic, “for every moment from now till next Monday night, is _not_ to worry over the situation. I feel,” he added, with a confidence real or assumed, “that everything will come out right.”

Louise looked at him incredulously. “You don’t really?”

“I do.”

She drew a breath of relief. “You certainly know how to inspire confidence.”

“That’s the way I earn my living. And my confidence expands enormously whenever you come in sight. You’re so--so trim, so pretty; you appeal to all the senses at once. First, you charm the eye; then there’s a faint, indefinable fragrance in your presence----”

Louise rose. “The President of the Standard Oil Company is waiting.”

“Let him wait,” retorted Janeway. “I hadn’t finished. To continue----”

“But you’re not going to continue,” declared Louise firmly. “You’ve said too much already. Next it will be my hat, and then my hair--that takes a long time--and then my hands and my feet--and my suit--all ‘impinging,’ as you say, on the valuable time of the President of the Standard Oil Company.”

Janeway looked closely at her, and pointed his words with a finger pantomime. “Louise,” he said earnestly, “I want to ask you just one question.”

“What is it?”

“If Will King were in here talking to you and I were out there waiting to get in--how long do you suppose he’d keep me cooling _my_ heels before he rang?”

“Suppose we ask him?” suggested Louise, retreating toward the door of Kennedy’s office. She raised her arm and with a fast-waving hand said good-by. “Which of these doors is the right one?” she asked. “I don’t want to collide with poor Mr. King.”

“You never were more tantalizing in your life,” protested Janeway. “I’ll let you go if you’ll do something. It’s too nice a day to lose. Get through with your shopping in time for the three-o’clock train; I’ll make it, too. We’ll get off at Cedar Point and motor home--it’s only thirty miles.”

“How many times in thirty miles will you want to stop and talk to the waves?”

He made a grimace of impatience. “Will you? That’s a good girl. I’ll ’phone Adolph to meet us at the Point with the roadster.”

* * * * *

Janeway at Cedar Point took the wheel from Adolph, who boarded the train, and with Louise beside him had driven half-way to Fond du Lac, when a turn in the road brought them to the edge of the lake. Janeway stopped the car, and, giving way, Louise walked with him out to the beach. The sun was well down and a tonic north wind filled their nostrils as they reached the edge of the waves, curling in long, even swells up the sands.

Louise laughed. “A beach always makes me think of the first story I ever heard about you; it gave me an idea of your terrible temper.”

“What could that have been?” demanded Janeway calmly.

“You took a big touring car down to Florida one winter. It was very heavy. You had trouble with it all the time. Finally, one day you were driving with friends along the beach, and the car stuck in the sand. Nobody could budge it. In great wrath you despatched your chauffeur for another car, put your party into it, drove off and left your big car there for good.”

“I hope it’s there yet,” remarked Janeway, facing her unabashed.

“What an absurd thing for a great lawyer to do!”

“Don’t make fun of me. _You_ know what a humbug I am, anyway, don’t you?”

They sat down on a ledge where the waves had undermined the turf. “No, I don’t know,” protested Louise promptly. “You must be a great lawyer. I’ve been hearing about it ever since I knew you. ‘Remarkably subtle mind; extraordinary grasp on constitutional questions; exceptional as a trial lawyer’!”

“What nonsense you know it all to be!”

“No, I don’t!” she insisted. “Haven’t I heard these judges that go fishing with Uncle Sidney talk? And somehow”--she was poking the point of her sunshade into the wet sand--“my ears are so wide open when your name comes up. And I say to myself, I don’t care how subtle his mind is--or how much he knows about the Constitution--or how much he sways a jury----”

“Make me out as silly as you can.”

“That’s all.”

“No, you hadn’t finished. Go on.”

Louise was in no hurry to proceed. “If you have such a remarkably subtle mind,” she said complacently, “you can guess the rest.”

“How much is there to it?”

With her sunshade she was drawing dancing dolls in the sand. “Just four words,” she said finally.

He could get no more from her, but she promised to tell him some time. When he called up late that evening, she thought the telephone was not the proper medium for at least one of the words.

“I hope it’s not a swear word,” he said reprovingly.

Her reply followed a slight pause. “I’m afraid it is, in a way. At least, many people swear by it.”

Before train time, in the morning, a note addressed in a hand he recognized by instinct was brought to his apartment. It bore a “Personal” caution above his name. He slit open the envelope, and found an unsigned correspondence card. On it was written in a small, fast-flowing hand:

“I’m awfully sorry I made that promise last night. You wheedled it out of me with that jury-fixing way of yours. Now, it makes me feel very silly indeed. But, since I promised: when I hear all these nonsensical things about you, I say to myself: I don’t care; he loves me, _anyway_.”

He neglected his morning paper, and having no prospect of seeing Louise that day, he called up, as the next best thing, her brother George, and asked him to take lunch at the Lawyers’ Club. At the table he reproached George for neglecting to run up to see his sister oftener, and having done so, told him the story of his hopes.

George listened with interest. He was pleased. But he made little of the difficulties that Janeway confessed confronted him. “If you want her, take her!” he exclaimed. “No institution should step in between a man and a woman that want to live together. And a man and a woman should live together only till they’re tired of each other--no longer.”

“But suppose one tires and the other doesn’t?”

“That minute,” declared George emphatically, “they should quit.”

“So,” commented Janeway, “when a man sees a woman he likes better than the first one he has picked on, he should desert Number One for Number Two--Number Two for Number Three--and so on down the line.”

“Just that!” exclaimed Louise’s brother. “And for a woman, exactly the same privilege. An ironclad marriage contract is a curse to human nature. If you want people to be happy, leave men and women as free as birds of the air to mate when and where and with whom they choose, and as often as they choose.”

“But, George,” said Janeway composedly, “would you give me such a privilege as that with your own sister? Would you condemn a woman like Louise to the filth of that kind of a sex barnyard?”

“Let the woman that wants to keep out of it, keep out.”

“That’s not the way your soviet heroes talk in Russia. They’re drafting women in Russia, George. When a man wants a woman, they profess to ‘need’ her, for the ‘service of the state’ in their soviet barnyard.”

Fargo shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not responsible for what’s done in Russia. I want men and women to be free.”

“Durand ought to be a good recruit for your ideas,” suggested Janeway, meditating, “and the bigger you make your barnyard the more popular it will be with the Simmses and Durands of your commonwealth. Well, here’s to your sex barnyard, George! May it flourish in your servile state!”

“But I think I can safely say that at least one Fargo of your family and one Janeway of mine will never avail themselves of its freedom!”

It was only after he returned to the office that he learned from Kennedy that the Durand Steel Company had passed its dividend. This was not reassuring, in view of the large cash settlement asked for Louise, to which he was holding Durand. But more disquieting was the further news that Kennedy had had the night before from Gertrude Durand. Bob, she told him, had quarrelled and, she thought, broken with Maymie Montgomery. And as an anticlimax came news under a scare-head in the evening papers that Mrs. Simms had brought suit for divorce, with the revolting particular that she had named, among others in her bill, her Wheaton relative.

Reaching Fond du Lac late, hot, quite tired, and grown serious with the day’s developments, a telegram, as he stepped from the train, was put in Janeway’s hands.

He tore it open on the platform; it was from Kennedy.

“Final decree in the Durand-Durand case came down late this afternoon. Property settlement gives Mrs. Durand practically everything asked for. Copy ready for you in the morning. Either party may remarry at any time. Congratulations!”

From his apartment Janeway despatched a messenger, enclosing the message to Louise.