IN THE LAST HOUR

“You’re coming in with us, Bishop?” Janeway turned with the question to Bishop Marion, who stood in the reception-room, waiting to close the doors behind the wedding party as it passed into the chapel.

The Bishop thought not. “My guests are not all gone yet. It may be better that I remain here a few moments.” Closing the door of the chapel, he crossed the room and opened the door into the hall, where Durand’s voice was plainly to be heard berating Simms.

“I don’t believe they’re here at all,” he was saying testily. “You’ve made a fine mess! First you tell me he can’t marry her; then you tell me he’ll marry her to-night! I’ll block that if I have to eat my words every day for ten years. You’re a bungler, Simms.”

“I?” exclaimed Simms. “Don’t talk to me, Durand. You’ve queered everything I’ve done from the start to keep you out of the hole!”

Bishop Marion walked forward to the bay window, raised the front shade and looked out into the street.

“Janeway’s beaten you at every turn,” retorted Durand, with bitterness, as the two men came down the hall. “Now he’s got half my surplus and my wife besides. You’re a great big windbag, Simms.”

“Look here! While you’re ranting, you’re getting beaten worse and worse. I tell you they’re here in this house, and if you don’t see her and fix it up with her, you’re beat forever!” With Durand sullenly following, Simms walked brusquely into the reception-room and pounded the call-bell on the table furiously. “Where are the infernal servants here?”

Bishop Marion spoke from the window, where he had stood until now unnoticed. “Whom,” he asked calmly, “do you wish to see, Mr. Simms?”

Simms whirled on him; known to the belligerent lawyer only as a man of peace, the Bishop seemed a safe outlet for his smarting ill-temper. “We want to see you,” he announced stridently. “Robert Durand wants to see his wife at once. Your servant started off to find her and never came back.”

The Bishop looked undisturbed at Durand. “Mr. Durand,” he said, in the same unmoved tone, “has seen his wife to-night.”

Durand cut off anything Simms could say. “I knew nothing then about this last conspiracy you’re a party to--to make her Janeway’s wife! This is your trick, is it?” demanded Durand furiously, facing the Bishop. “Posing with your long fingers and oily tongue as an apostle of matrimonial purity, and attempting to marry a divorced woman to a crooked lawyer!”

Simms felt that he, too, should register, in the interest of high thinking and right living, his emphatic protest. “It’s an outrage, Bishop Marion!” he thundered. “A scandal to religion for a man holding an--er--honored office, a position of--er--er--hierarchical trust--to lend himself to such a damnable proceeding! I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard it! You make me ashamed of the Church I was baptized in!”

The Bishop did not seem deeply stirred. He looked at one and the other of the two men who faced him, as each spoke. But though his demeanor was restrained, the expression of his eyes, as Simms continued to hurl condemnation at him, changed.

“And have you the audacity, Simms,” he said deliberately, “to stand before me and talk of scandal to religion, in the face of the life you live and the example you set in this community? You,” repeated the Bishop, with gathering indignation, “born and reared in the Catholic faith, yet whose face is never seen inside a Catholic church! You, public profligate and reprobate that you are--a reproach to your baptism--have you the effrontery to accuse _me_ of giving scandal? I say to you, Simms”--the voice of the gray-haired prelate shook with the castigation. He pointed his finger at the astounded attorney. “I say to you, this blinded pagan at your side”--the finger fixed on Durand--“sunken in vice as he is, is less guilty, in the eyes of God, than you! He has never fallen, as you have, from decency and restraint! Wretched man! Scandal of your faith! When Sodom and Gomorrah are weighed--how--God help you--shall you be judged?

“And you, Durand! This is the creature you have enlisted to help you persecute an unoffending woman! How are you to be named when men speak of men?”

Durand was able to recover himself first. “You’re a hypocrite!” he shouted. “You’ve exploited my domestic troubles to line your own pockets. I tell you, my wife offered to-night to come back and live with me. I want no abuse at your hands, no threats from you; I’ll hold you personally responsible for detaining her!”

“Then I say to you here and now, Durand,” and the Bishop, with flashing eyes, laid his words like whip-lashes on the husband’s shoulders, “that your pagan marriage, with its iniquities you have wallowed in, and into which you tried to drag your innocent wife, is dissolved! I say to you that before the State and before God you have no wife! I invoke to-night for Louise Durand what your own intolerable conduct has given her--THE PAULINE PRIVILEGE! And the last remnant of any bond binding her to you breaks this night when she becomes the true wife of Henry Janeway!”

“And I say to you!” cried Durand, his confidence shaken but his effrontery unabated, “in the presence of this witness, that I’ll make the promises you and she require. I’ll take my wife back and leave her free and untrammelled in the practice of her religion. And I demand her at your hands!”

The folding doors of the chapel were thrown open by Father Smyth. Louise walked out at Janeway’s side. The glow suffusing her face told the Bishop all he needed to know. “Your professions are too late,” he said sternly to Durand. “Neither God nor man gives you claim on this woman now; she is Henry Janeway’s wife.”

“It’s conspiracy!” blustered Simms. “Plain conspiracy! We’ll see what the courts have to say about this! Come, Mr. Durand.” The two were starting from the room when Janeway spoke. “Hold on, Simms. You said you had a copy of that settlement document with you. Give it to me.”

Simms drew the agreement from his pocket. Durand interposed sharply. “Do nothing of the kind, Simms. Give that paper to me!”

Between the two fires Simms hesitated. He looked from one to the other of the men, afraid of offending Durand, but knowing they could not bluff Janeway. He turned on the steel master placatingly. “Mr. Durand, this is in accordance with the court record,” he said, trying to explain. “It merely itemizes the sums and securities stipulated in the settlement. It would do no good to withhold it. The court has entered the decree.”

“Curse the decree!” exclaimed Durand, losing what little temper he had left. “I’ll have it annulled. This is fraud. I’ll claim my wife!” Janeway only laughed gently. “Give me that paper!” persisted Durand in wrath.

“Bob, I tell you it’s no possible use,” objected Simms tartly. “The court will enforce it, anyway!”

“Simms,” said Janeway, holding out his hand, with a tone of finality, “deliver that paper.” Simms reluctantly handed it to him. Janeway turned to his wife. “Louise,” he said, “this is yours.” She took the agreement, looking at him inquiringly. “When I exacted it,” he went on, “I believed, or feared, you might face the world without an income, without the training to earn a living, without a protector to do it for you; my hopes, not my fears, have been realized. It is now my privilege to lay my earnings in your hands for your comfort and protection. I am your income.” He pointed to the paper in her hand. “This shield from the hardships of the world, rightfully yours, is no longer a necessity. What will you do with it?”

She looked at her husband. “It was your solicitude, Henry, that provided this.” She held the paper in her open hand. “I never insisted on it,” she added.

“Simple justice entitled you to it,” said Janeway. “It restores to you what is left of your father’s estate. And exacts, in addition, a substantial sum for the humiliations and injustices you have suffered. But as money you no longer need it. What will you now do with it?”

Without hesitation she put the paper in her husband’s hand. “You,” she replied, “will know best what to do with it.”

Janeway, pausing as he looked at the paper, regarded her with seriousness. “Do you give me this, Louise,” he asked, “to do with exactly as I please?”

“To do with exactly as you please, Henry.”

“Then I will say to Mr. Simms and Mr. Durand,” continued Janeway, “and to this little world of Fond du Lac, that my wife will not participate in the surplus of the twelve-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week Durand Corporation. I hope personally to provide for the necessities, and, if possible, the luxuries of Mrs. Henry Janeway. The property representing in this document your father’s estate is properly restored to you. As to the added securities pledged herein by Robert Durand, they would make, it seems plain to me, a fitting foundation for a children’s hospital. Persuade, if you can, Bishop Marion and Judge Harrison to act as your trustees in such an undertaking, Louise. If they can be made to accept, the community will know that your trust is to be faithfully carried out. And I feel sure now that Bishop Marion will excuse Mr. Simms and Mr. Durand from further participation in the happiness of this evening.”

Without attempting further retort, Durand turned brusquely on his heel, and, followed by Simms--Janeway still eying them--left the room and the house.

Bishop Marion took one of Louise’s and one of Janeway’s hands. “And our little ‘conspiracy,’” he said, “is dissolved.”

“No,” responded Janeway, clasping the Bishop’s hand in both his own, and unleashing for the moment the intensity of his feelings. “It’s not dissolved yet; I hope it never will be dissolved. I hope I may always retain the loyal friendship that has brought me my wife”--he looked at her--“and the happiness that is ours now. You have guided us patiently through seas uncharted to me, into a haven of safety. You have established a new home----”

Bishop Marion’s self-consciousness would stand no more. “You are too grateful,” he protested, “for the little I have done.” He looked at Louise. “It was only your right, my dear child, that I have given you; and what I have done for you, I would have done--indeed, have done--for the simplest of my flock. I rejoice with you both, honestly, in your new-found happiness. And, I repeat, our ‘conspiracy’----”

“Do not repeat, Bishop,” interrupted Janeway, “that our ‘conspiracy,’ as Mr. Durand terms it, is dissolved. My best friend”--he indicated Judge Harrison, who, with an unlighted cigar between his fingers, tried to appear somewhat at ease--“is here witness that I have entered into a new and solemn engagement, with the oldest living member of the natural-contract family--matrimony. I am going to try to make one woman happy, trusting to find in her happiness my own. It is you”--he addressed Bishop Marion--“who have surrendered her into my keeping--to you I must in some measure be responsible. Give us, at least, your blessing, that in what I undertake I may not fail!”

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

The original text had a missing word in the sentence starting “Wrapped in thought, Janeway, while Louise made comment”, on page 282. The omission of “no” before “comment” has been retained in this edition.

Missing quotation marks restored and obvious typographical errors corrected.