CAN I WIN AGAIN?

On Saturday night Janeway had a political meeting to address in Chicago. Uneasy over the developments in his own particular concerns, the task of speaking seemed an especially onerous one. But the meeting was meant to launch the Harding campaign in the Middle West, and demanded his best possible effort; its success was deemed vital.

The night proved insufferably warm, but the auditorium was packed. Despite the weather handicap and his own mental anxieties, Janeway, whose sympathies were enlisted in the signal defeat of the incumbent administration, rose to the occasion. Never a strong partisan, his detachment on ordinary issues lent force to his present appeal, and in the eight years of Mr. Wilson’s record in the White House he found ample material for his purpose. His facts, chosen strictly with a view to their cumulative force, concealed his bitterness skilfully, and with his energy carefully in hand, Janeway, in speaking, seemed the frankest and most disinterested man in the huge gathering.

Simms had come down with Judge Harrison to see how the thing went off. His first expression of opinion was given in reply to a prod from Harrison as the two left the platform. “The mildest-mannered man,” quoted Simms vindictively, “that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat.”

Harrison’s comment was dry: “All throats should be cut and all ships scuttled in that fashion; it’s the most effective. He certainly bored into your craft to-night.”

“Jury talk--jury talk, Janeway,” sputtered Simms impatiently, as the three men sat down to supper.

“If every case I’ve had to lay before a jury had as much merit as that, my juries wouldn’t have to leave the box,” remarked Janeway.

“Why can’t you come out square in the open and fight clean and aboveboard?” demanded Simms, with indignation.

“There are several answers to that,” returned Janeway lazily. “The first is, it’s too hot.”

“You appeared to have ’em with you to-night, Henry,” observed Harrison, biting his cigar.

“A man that couldn’t talk on _that_ subject,” exclaimed Janeway, “would have to be born in darkest America. I’m no patriot; but any man, after he’s been robbed, and bludgeoned, into the bargain, will talk.”

Janeway had intended to stay at the club, but Harrison persuaded him the heat was such that he could not sleep in the city, anyway. He finally accepted Harrison’s suggestion that he ride to Fond du Lac with Simms and himself in Harrison’s car. Still warm from his work, Janeway took the seat with the chauffeur, and, lapsing into silence, gave little heed to the talk in the tonneau. He had enough to think about. And the stars were good company. The travellers had looked for a deserted roadstead, but the highway was packed with cars the whole way home. They reached Fond du Lac drowsy but cooled, just as the east was brightening with the new day.

Janeway, still keyed up from his effort, slept uneasily and for only a few hours. At breakfast a sudden resolve seized him--to go to church. And next to go to the procathedral, because there he might see Louise. He was to be at Gertrude’s in the evening for dinner, but the intervening hours bulked before him like an age.

When he reached the church, High Mass was under way. The usher he met in the vestibule proved a local acquaintance whom Janeway knew but could not place, and who, with a quick smile, beckoned the chance visitor to come with him. Janeway would have sought an inconspicuous place, but it was impossible, without running, to catch up with his guide to ask for one. To his great annoyance the young man, treating him as an exhibit, led him on and on down the crowded centre aisle, till Janeway, red in the face, found himself seated within a few pews of the altar-rail. Unluckily, too, the pewholder whose hospitality had been invoked in his behalf knew Janeway, and the efforts on his part to make the unexpected guest feel at home made him feel the less so. From the choir-loft came the martial strains of the Gloria. But by giving his attention with ostentatious correctness to what Harrison would have termed “the proceedings” at the high altar, Janeway gradually cooled, and, as he did so, recovered his poise.

By that time the pulpit had been rolled to the front, and a young clergyman was reading the announcements. Janeway listened to the opening of the sermon, mentally following and changing at times the words and phrases of the youthful orator, but sympathetic to the simplicity of his presentation. Then his mind wandered, and he recalled the last time--some years earlier--that he had been in that church. It was at the funeral of an elderly man, a client. Janeway had drawn his will, and the family asked Janeway to be a pall-bearer, because of the friendship the dead man had felt for him.

The incident had fixed itself in Janeway’s mind because of an unusual circumstance. The dead man had failed in Fond du Lac in business. It had been a bad failure and a compromise with the creditors. The man had been, through Janeway’s efforts, legally freed from his debts. Years afterward a strange thing--at least in Janeway’s experience--had happened. The man, succeeding then very well, had come and told him he wished to make further payments to his old creditors, until they should receive, when and as he was able, a hundred cents on the dollar for their claims. Janeway had notified the creditors, widely scattered, and a large initial payment had been made, when death had knocked at the heart of his client, and, dying, he had told everything to his lawyer, because it then became a necessity.

In his old failure the man, now long dead, had concealed an item in his assets. It had never been found out--never would be, Janeway had told him--but the client was bent on making complete restitution, and now committed the unfinished amend to his two grown sons. Janeway was made solemnly to promise that, so far as in him lay, he would see that the dead man’s sons carried out their father’s dying injunction--though they were never to know the real reason for it; Janeway had urged that they should not.

The two sons, strong men, had faithfully co-operated in the discharge of the debt. It left Janeway now only to recall the strictness of the dying man’s code, and how a sort of death agony of humiliation had beaded his brow in the moment he found himself forced to confess to his attorney a shameful delinquency.

The sermon was ended--though it happened it was the dead man who had preached to Janeway’s somewhat cynical views, formed among men of large affairs, on conscientious scruples. And Janeway now recollected it was the younger of his friend’s two sons who had ushered him to an honorable seat before the altar, and the older who had welcomed him to the family pew.

The Mass had been resumed when Janeway’s mind returned to the scene before him. He wondered whether Louise might be in the church, but the perfervid usher had placed him where he could see but few of the congregation. The music of the Credo reached his ears; then the dignity of the function at the altar, as the officiating priest reached the Canon of the Mass, held his interest. With the coming of the Sanctus he heard the strident warning of an altar-bell. The solemn moment of the celebration was at hand, and the hush that spread over the crowded nave reacted on Janeway.

He shared, without knowing why, in the suspense of the waiting multitude of which he had made himself one. He watched, without understanding, the priest bow low, in the words of the consecration, and suddenly kneel, while the acolyte struck the bell again. He saw the heads bowed about him as the Host was elevated. It was as if he had for a moment participated in some strange new sensation, some mystery never before touched on. He fell musing on what his new feeling might be, surrendered an instant to its restfulness, and only the music of the Agnus Dei, storming heaven with its plea, brought him uncertainly back to his surroundings.

Abandoned to his dreaming mood, seeing and hearing what his eyes and ears filmed before his senses, yet with his mind wandering to the battlefields of France, back to the altar and then to Louise, he sat, half in trance, until the priest, turning toward him, held the Host aloft and repeated the words of the _Domine, non sum dignus_, while an acolyte, walking down to the rail, threw over it the communion cloth.

A burst of music fell upon Janeway’s ears. With the unison of many voices rising higher and still higher in the pleading of the Agnus Dei, the thunders of the organ rolled down the long nave. He heard, breaking in on this, the harsh clang of the sanctuary bell. Then he was conscious of a hush among the people, and his ear caught a quick feminine step in the aisle--a slender figure, that of a youthful woman, her veil half raised, passed him rapidly and knelt at the foot of the sanctuary steps. It was Louise.

Janeway’s shock, the thrill of watching her walk up alone before the silent congregation in an act of humility and faith, blended into the solemnity of the scene. The hush of the watching multitude under the prayer of the swelling music, the priest coming slowly down from the altar, bearing the ciborium and the Host, held him motionless. He saw Louise rise, ascend the steps, and kneel at the sanctuary rail to receive the Holy Eucharist.

He had seen this woman who had so entered his life, in many aspects of loveliness--to him; under many circumstances moving--to him; in many moods that ministered to every wish of his heart, that stilled with hope every desire of his being; yet in none of these had she seemed quite as she now seemed, kneeling alone before him at the altar; it was as if a curtain never before raised had been lifted; as if, himself unseen, he had for an instant looked into her soul.

He passed out as the congregation passed out, saw Louise kneeling, with head bowed, in a seat well down the aisle, and waited outside in the sunshine. When she appeared she half tripped down the cathedral steps, laughing at seeing him. She bore in on his stiff seriousness, as she always did when care free, with bantering questions. She seemed to bring out something pleasant but only rudimentary in his nature. Her light-heartedness, her buoyancy of spirit, knocked at something dormant, something neglected, but something that could be awakened, in his own nature, and, whatever it was, pleasant to feel. In a few moments she could change his mood, put new thoughts into his head, lift his spirits, naturally sober, to her own.

“You must have covered yourself with glory last night,” she said, as they started to walk home.

“I covered myself with perspiration. It was fearfully close. I hope the election won’t be like it.”

“The morning papers featured you.”

“Not for any love of me; they want Harding elected.”

“It was a dreadful photograph of you. But”--she lifted her eyes to his for just an instant--“I was awfully proud. Gertrude and I were sorry we hadn’t gone down.”

“If you’d been there I should have forgotten my speech.”

“It was so warm I lay awake nearly all night, anyway. Then I overslept this morning and missed the early Masses.”

“That was for my particular benefit.” He turned to her as they walked. “It amazes me, how little I think of outside you. When I leave you, it’s only to wonder when I shall see you again.”

“Heavens!” she exclaimed. She was looking straight ahead to break the gathering force of his words, and saw an unwelcome sight. “There comes Mr. Simms.”

Janeway, too, was annoyed, but turned it off. “If he carries any tales I’ll kill him,” he said evenly.

Simms greeted them effusively. He stopped a moment to abuse Janeway for his talk at the auditorium and moved on. Janeway hung on till he reached Gertrude’s. Louise could not do otherwise than ask him in. Indeed, she was little loath to cling to his company. Gertrude had not come down-stairs, and Janeway sat in the dining-room while Louise took her rolls and coffee.

“Sure you won’t have a cup--just a little one?” she asked, more than once--partly for hospitality and largely in an effort to divert his mind from an all-pervading interest in everything she was doing. He declined refreshment, but walked with her out into the garden. They sat down in the shade of the pergola.

“Will Simms do us any harm?” Louise asked. She was sitting close beside him, in the lee, as it were, of his arm; he had thrown it along the back of the bench and sat half facing her. She, in the sheerest of white, tried not to be self-conscious, but Janeway, however quiet, made the effort an unremitting one. When she asked her question, his eyes happened to be bent on her hands, folded very simply in her lap. And when he made no answer, she repeated her question. “Will Simms, do you think, do us any harm?”

“All he can,” he returned contemptuously. “How nice and cool you look,” he added.

“I am cool. Your suit is too heavy for to-day, isn’t it?”

“I always forget to change. Where did you get such hands?”

“Isn’t it terrible to want to make trouble for others?”

Janeway half laughed. “I’m going to play golf with him this afternoon. And I’m going to hand him a poser myself.”

“What kind of a poser?”

He regarded her with quizzical benevolence. “Gertrude has invited me for dinner. I’ll tell you to-night.”

* * * * *

At dinner Kennedy joined them. Gertrude and he sat down with Louise and Janeway. Afterward Kennedy and Gertrude went for a drive. Louise and Janeway walked in the summer night up the lake front, and, returning, sought the coolness of the garden. Only twenty-four hours lay between them and the crisis of their lives, and its impending weighed, despite the efforts of each to conceal from the other the strain both felt. “It’s no use, I guess,” said Janeway at last. “We’re trying to talk and think about everything but what we actually _are_ thinking of, if not talking about; I would to-morrow night were past!”

“You were going to tell me what you said to Simms.”

“Then first I must tell you why I said it. A new complication arose yesterday. I said nothing about it for fear it should worry you; don’t let it--any more than you can help, anyway. Durand has quarrelled with Mrs. Montgomery, I hear. That makes our situation somewhat more delicate--if anything can,” he added with gentle irony. “So I injected another factor into the case to-day. I said to Simms: ‘Simms, I’m beginning to feel Bob Durand and I both made a mistake in quarrelling. I’m going to tell him so at the first opportunity. Is there any good reason why we shouldn’t resume our old relations?’

“Simms was struck dumb. You can imagine how that set on _him_. His head will whirl like a merry-go-round till he can get Durand’s ear and warn him I’ve got something dangerous up my sleeve. In point of fact, I have, but not of the sort he supposes.

“With that astonishing overture planted, their minds will be in confusion for a day, at least; in it we may escape; I wish to God I knew!”

Louise drew herself up a little and took a breath as if of resolve. She looked at him with something of the affection she usually guarded so closely.

“Whatever comes, Henry,” she said quietly, “I can never be grateful enough for your patient restraint. If nothing else had touched my heart, that would. From the very first you’ve been, every moment, considerate! Don’t imagine I don’t realize it; don’t imagine--” Afraid to go too far, she checked herself as quickly as she had begun. “It’s out of fashion nowadays in love-making, you know,” she said, with a hard laugh.

“Yes, I do know,” he answered simply. “I realize how foolish I should seem, tried by present-day standards. ‘If you want her,’ says even as wise a man as Judge Harrison, ‘tear her silly religious scruples away from her--they’re out of date--carry her off!’ ‘Yes,’ I said to him, ‘I’ve thought of that, too. I’m not an expert at love-making. And it may be that if another type of woman were in question, I might forcibly abduct her. But I’m not interested in a mere abduction. I want to live my whole life with the woman I love. I want her to be happy--otherwise I can’t be. To separate her with violence from her matured convictions in the most vital of concerns, after what she has already been through, might work for a while. But should I really have the same woman I loved? Or altogether another sort of woman?’

“When I was young in the law I used to tie men up for my clients in contracts so tight they couldn’t breathe; I never do that any more. Men will sign; but if the agreements are too violently one-sided they won’t stick.

“I think,” he went on, “a man would be a poor manager--he’d be a mighty poor judge of human nature, and that means a poor lawyer--if, on catching a humming-bird and a hawk, he were to treat them both alike. You might starve the hawk, common style, into tameness; but the humming-bird would die. I don’t see what I have to gain by doing violence to mine; I want her exactly what she is--not turned into a hawk. She might, some time, sink her claws into _me_!”

Wrapped in thought, Janeway, while Louise made comment, looked out across the garden. In a moment he laughed. “What is it?” she asked.

“I was just thinking,” returned Janeway, “when I get to heaven----”

“Oh!” exclaimed Louise, “you expect to get there, then?”

“Well, for my trial, at least; I understand every man is to have his ‘last day’ in court. I want to ask God just one question. I want to turn my eyes back for once on the ruck of men and women that incumber this earth, and say: ‘How did You stand them?’”

Louise laughed. “I shouldn’t dare ask Him that.”

“Why not?”

“He might ask: ‘How did I stand _you_?’”

She saw, despite his raillery, how his anxiety was centred on what confronted them in the interpellation. “You’ve borne it all so well,” she said, “and you’ve done nothing to deserve all this. I feel like a wretch to inflict it on you.”

His hand covered hers. “My only fear once was that you might refuse to ‘inflict’ your difficulties on me. Even now I suffer more suspense for you, if possible, than for myself--though I can’t think of us any more as two; I think of us only as one. If I am anxious, if I am sometimes worried----”

“I know more than you think how it has weighed on you.”

“If it has, it’s because it’s all so strange, so unaccustomed in my life; it’s because it stirs depths that I never knew were within me till I loved you. Then, when I think coolly of it, and of my chances, Louise--” He checked himself. “Why should I say this to you?”

She resented his forbearance. “I want to hear everything.”

“Sometimes I feel like a gambler--a gambler who, staking all on the fickle turn of a card, has played the game year after year and won; a gambler who looks back now, awed, at the wrecks on every side, that sat at the same table with him, laid the same stake, success, on the same card--and lost!

“And now”--his fingers closed over hers--“I grope forward again bringing in my hand--not as steady as it used to be--my old stake, success! And this time I bring with it my only chance for happiness--my life--and I bring it to the table to take the last chance on the last card that can ever turn for me in this world----”

“Don’t say that!”

“But I do say it! And I say to myself: Is it even _possible_ I can win again?”