CHAPTER II THE EVENING AT HARRISON’S

It was more tedious, Louise told herself, not to talk to her neighbor at dinner than to make the effort to do so. Moreover, people of sensitive disposition do not like to seem discourteous even to those they imagine they will not like. The guests at the Harrisons’ included Durand and his wife, with George Fargo, Louise’s only brother, a young lawyer then in Harrison’s office. Janeway was seated at Mrs. Harrison’s right, with Louise next. There was no lack of conversation; all six were equal to anything when occasion demanded. But Janeway at the start was silent—rather like a man tired—and let the others hold forth. He likewise paid little superfluous attention to Louise, but this she did not resent.

“Uncle Sidney has been telling me stories about you,” she said to him, when something presently seemed required.

“Mean ones?”

“One was mean.”

“Let me have that first.”

“The mean one was about a time you were trying to defeat somebody for speaker of the legislature. You were a railroad attorney then, Uncle said, and were moving heaven and earth to beat this man, and hadn’t succeeded. And when all the members were seated in session and the vote was about to be taken, you walked, in full sight of everybody, down the middle aisle of the assembly chamber to where the poor fellow sat, and whispered something in his ear. And then everybody voted against him!”

“That ‘poor fellow’ was an out-and-out crook,” replied Janeway very bluntly. “I suppose your uncle told you, too, how I robbed him in a condemnation suit?”

“He told us that this afternoon.”

“If he has told you those two stories you know the worst of me—as far as his information goes.”

“But I can’t understand,” continued his questioner, “how a lawyer, like Uncle Sidney, can enjoy telling a story about getting beaten.”

“It’s like a game of chess,” explained Janeway. “A keen player—and Judge Harrison plays everything keenly—is always interested in a new move, even when made by an inferior opponent, and even if it defeats him.”

“But if law is a game, where does justice come in?”

“Don’t confuse law—or the application of law—and justice.”

“I thought law and justice were supposed to be the same thing.”

“That’s why so many people abuse the profession of law. Justice is an abstraction, an elusive thing, often difficult to apply to particular circumstances. You invoke law and you hope for justice. You don’t always get it.”

“Does any one ever get it?” asked George Fargo, listening across the table. George at twenty-five, blue-eyed and mild—most of the time—was a Socialist and an aggressive one.

Janeway looked at him, undisturbed. “As often, it is safe to say, as any one gets anything he’s entitled to in this sorrowful world. Human justice is a compromise; it is nothing fixed, nothing absolute. A man should put no more faith in it than he does in a trade. True, we are sometimes forced to appeal to human justice, whereas we are not always forced to trade. But we should make the appeal with the trading spirit, rather than with childlike confidence—always bearing in mind, as in a trade, that we may be worsted, and accepting the result with a mild cynicism, not a bitter disappointment. The mistake is ever relying on so frail a reed in the beginning.”

Louise cut off her brother’s retort. “And are you coming back to Fond du Lac to live?” she said to Janeway.

“I haven’t decided to. Judge Harrison and your husband seem conspiring to that end.”

“I suppose everybody’s been showering compliments on you over your victory. I shan’t offer any.”

“Thank you.”

“No doubt these men were guilty,” continued Louise. She was resolved to express herself, and meant to add that she was sorry for their families, but Robert Durand caught and cut off his wife’s remark. “What’s the difference?” he asked sharply.

Janeway did not hesitate to interpose a flat comment. “I should say, a material difference.”

“Oh, come,” protested Durand. “You’re the lawyer; you have to talk to a jury. All we wanted was to get a part of that Union bunch—any of them—sent up, to scare the rest. They ought all to be locked up,” he added, dropping his voice as if bored with the effort. “They’re all crooks.”

Janeway did not look pleased. Louise, watching him, smiled. “Law,” she quoted, “is a game, anyway.”

He turned on his critic. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you said it.”

“Not at all,” he objected promptly. “I likened law to a game of chess. All figures of speech are misleading.” Without the slightest note of apology in his expression, he bent his eyes for the first time on Louise; they struck her as penetrating. Neither was there apology in his tone; only bluntness. “I shall, no doubt, surprise you in one respect,” he continued. “Law may be a game; but if I hadn’t been dead sure these men were guilty, I certainly shouldn’t have prosecuted them; I detest criminal cases, anyway.”

“Listen to that from an eminent corporation counsellor,” laughed George Fargo.

Janeway retorted without a hitch. “Don’t fasten such a stigma on me yet. I have no claim to it, George. And you’re a Socialist, anyway.”

“That designation is a badge of honor, Mr. Janeway.”

“As well as a sanction among young persons for loose speaking,” returned Janeway.

Louise was somewhat in doubt concerning the straight, heavy brows that followed the arch closely and guarded her neighbor’s deep-set eyes. She noticed that in talking, Janeway was inclined to throw back his head, and at such times his brows were even more striking. If not aggressive they suggested mental attitudes that might be very stubborn. Such qualities did not seem unpleasantly reflected in his manner, but the discrepancy made her suspicious of the newcomer into the social circle.

He had not been described, except by Mrs. Simms—not good authority to Louise—as a fighter, yet his voice suggested stiff mental reservations; it was dry in quality and not always as complacent as his words. Often at the end of a sentence it dropped oddly, almost humorously, as if conceding that life, after all, was not to be taken too rigidly. His nose was ample and straight, with a rounded tip separating full nostrils. These served partly to shade an irregular mustache, one that described at each end an independent angle; it was a development evidently neglected—at least to the extent of being allowed, among better-ordered features, to make its own way in the world. But with all its irregularity, it served to modify the expression of a mouth beyond doubt uncompromising.

Louise noticed as the dinner progressed that her neighbor drank freely but rather carelessly—as if without regard to quantity rather than really greedy of wine; yet as concerned the filling of his glasses the result was much the same. However, Louise was used, at her own table and the tables of her friends, to free drinking.

If Janeway’s impressions of Mrs. Durand could have been recorded they would have been nebulous, as a man’s impressions on the mere meeting of an attractive woman usually are. The delicate contour preserved from her head to her feet; the pleasing rather than distinctive lips, and the smile pleasantly parting them; the cheeks without much color, yet little troubled by the aids of society; the straight, slender nose, and the not too thin-cut but sensitive nostrils—these combined to set Louise’s frank eyes very honestly before him.

If critical he might have pronounced her cheek-bones high—they lengthened rather than rounded her face—and her chin, though enough, might have carried more emphasis. But of these canons of objective criticism Janeway was ignorant, and would have professed himself content to remain ignorant. What mattered was that her hands were unobtrusively rather than conspicuously jewelled, and that graceful feminine fingers held in his field of vision a suspended fork, while gray-blue and somewhat imperious eyes demanded his own eyes, and fast-moving, feminine lips poured out a flow of agreeable words, whether good-natured or critical, that were meant for him and no one else. All this tended to make him satisfied with himself and considerate of a passing acquaintance.

Had he been asked whether he liked Louise, Janeway would have said—had he consented to say anything—that he did like her. But not all of our impressions are at once defined, even by ourselves, particularly at moments in which our mind is actively engaged in several directions.

Janeway knew Robert Durand less than he knew Harrison and Jacob Simms. As heads of Durand’s legal staff, both Harrison and Simms had been in contact with Janeway more frequently than Durand himself. But Durand and Janeway were nearly of an age, and Harrison, from this, had reasoned that the two men might find things in common to make their personal relations agreeable; he was too experienced a diplomat not to calculate the importance of some sort of community of tastes, in work and play, between associates charged with serious business responsibilities.

Durand, as he sat at the table, made an agreeable figure. He was just now in excellent humor—the bitter fight to convict the men that had blown up his mill had been won, against the gloomy predictions of failure that had persisted about him. Whatever discredited the agitators among his men gratified him, and the dinner fittingly closed a period covering weeks and months of continuing apprehension and irritation. All the physical characteristics of the energetic young American man of business were presented in Durand: the straight, sleek hair—Durand’s was abundant and of a light brown—and the cleanly shaven features. Sustained by an easy voice and humorous tone in speaking, he could always entertain—provided he felt so inclined, as he did now.

Louise continued to talk to Janeway. “You used to live here,” she said.

“I spent the best years of my life in this little town.”

She looked amused. “Pray, what were they?”

“From eight to eighteen.”

She laughed. “And you call those the best years of your life?”

Janeway seemed indifferent to the sceptical note. “Thus far,” he answered, unabashed.

“You weren’t born here, then?”

“No.”

“Your father, Henry,” interposed Mrs. Harrison, “came from my State, you told me—Delaware.”

“My people all came from Delaware and Maryland.”

Louise continued to be polite. “So far away?”

“My grandfather lost a young wife. He manumitted his slaves and fared away to forget things—as well as to mend his fortunes—married again, saw Fond du Lac, and rested.”

“Janeway,” interposed Durand, speaking loud enough to cut off the conversation across the table, “eat a good dinner.”

“I’m doing very well,” responded Janeway.

“You’re eating hardly anything,” complained Mrs. Harrison.

“After some days in court, my appetite deserts me,” returned Janeway, in defense.

“I’m giving you the advice,” continued Durand, “because the talk this afternoon is, you’re going to be dynamited.”

“Robert!” protested his wife.

“It may be I deserve it,” suggested Janeway.

“That’s the talk among the strikers,” persisted Durand. “You’re not to be allowed to enjoy the fruits of your victory.”

“Others will,” returned Janeway philosophically.

Mrs. Harrison was not pleased. “Well, do let Mr. Janeway enjoy them——”

“Until the explosion?” smiled Janeway.

“At least until the dinner is served,” said Louise, with some resentment.

“If that’s a challenge to my table efforts,” observed Janeway, speaking to Durand, “I’m going to do better from now on.”

“Those fellows are dead sore,” Durand continued. “But we’ll see you have a good funeral.”

“Dynamiting itself would constitute a pretty complete one, wouldn’t it?” asked Janeway.

“Dynamiting itself condemns our whole social order,” remarked George Fargo.

“It does, George,” returned Janeway, in the manner of one averse at the moment to an effort. “And,” he added, “when used strictly as a social argument, it condemns itself.”

“Present-day society,” retorted Fargo, “is a failure.”

“So is dynamite as a remedy,” rejoined Janeway impassively.

“But dynamite is only a symptom.”

Janeway manifested no impatience. “Neither man nor his works can hope to escape symptoms,” he observed. “If we set up your Socialistic state, we shall only be jumping from the frying-pan into the fire.”

“You assert, Mr. Janeway.”

“Because you assume, Mr. Fargo. You offer the most monstrous of all human assumptions, namely, that when all men have a fair chance—which they don’t have now—all men will behave themselves.”

“Is there any reason why they shouldn’t?” asked Louise.

“Experience,” declared Janeway, collected as against one or more inquisitors, “is against the assumption. Even I have seen all manner of men, with all manner of opportunities, and they have not behaved themselves, and would not behave themselves.”

“Why?” asked Louise, without much more of an idea than to hear what this positive man had to say.

“Now you are getting to the core,” he continued. “Because it’s human nature, I guess. I grew up in this town under an old-fashioned Congregational minister. He was strong on one point——”

“Hell-fire,” suggested Fargo contemptuously.

“Nothing so academic as that; not hell-fire, but original sin. Hell-fire is, at worst, a long-distance menace. But who can escape in this life daily exemplification of the cussedness of human nature implanted by original sin? And incidentally, why quarrel with the idea of hell-fire, George? Are you willing to concede nothing to the longing of the human heart for retributive justice? Most people in this world don’t get all the hell that’s coming to them—at least, not in the opinion of their relatives.”

“But I hope,” interposed Fargo, with impatience, “you don’t bring all this ridiculous stuff into social argument.”

“Unhappily, George, original sin was brought into social argument long before my brief hour. I never got very far in theology, but on that dogma I was pretty well grounded. My old minister died—Fond du Lac could better have spared many another man—but his weekly hammerings fixed themselves in my mind. I have tested them in the severest school I know anything about—experience—and they have stood the test. Men know what is better; yet they do what is worse. Other men have so done; I have so done. If my experience is credible, if my consciousness is credible——”

“And your assumption of what’s better and what’s worse is credible,” interjected Fargo.

“I accept, incorporate your suggestion, and add,” said Janeway, “—then my old preacher was right. And I go even further. If there were no such dogma, it would be necessary to invent one——”

“As that was invented,” persisted Fargo.

“I shan’t quarrel over a word. Invented ‘as that was,’ if you wish, to explain the downright cussedness in human nature. And it’s precisely that, George, that has upset and will upset all ideal commonwealths. Your Socialistic state will be a failure for the same reason that society to-day is a failure—because tainted human nature, which is the basis of both, is a failure. Your Socialism urges against our society its injustice; Christian Science urges against the doctors their blunders; but prudent people will continue to call in blundering doctors just the same. We must do the best we can with the injustices and the blunders—try to correct and avoid them as long as it is human to err. When you show me fundamentally different men and women, I’ll be a Socialist with you. All human government is contemptible, anyway.”

After dinner Durand went down-town. Louise, in the living-room, continued to draw out Janeway. “Brother George,” she said, “told me yesterday that if you come here, he may be in your office—so Judge Harrison told him.” She spoke as if feeling for a comment on her brother. Janeway did not refuse it.

“Your brother is a likable boy,” he responded, “and very bright. I think, if the Judge sends him to me, we shall get on.”

“When he came back from college a Socialist,” Louise went on, as if in a somewhat pathetic confidence, “it broke my father’s heart. ‘I sent them good material for an American citizen,’ he said to me before his death, mournfully, ‘and they sent me back an atheist and a madman.’”

“Boys are certainly a difficult proposition to-day—everything is changing so—everything a flux. Look at the poor Europeans! If I were bringing up a boy nowadays to be a king, I should begin by teaching him a trade.”

She watched Janeway narrowly while he spoke; it was not difficult for him to perceive how closely her heart was bound up in this brother. And she was already conscious of the influence that the new acquisition to the Durand legal forces was exercising on her brother, and was feeling her way into Janeway’s views and into some estimate of his character. “I do hope,” she went on, almost uneasily, “you are not a Socialist.”

“I haven’t said anything to lead you to think so,” he returned, almost without concern.

She tried to laugh it off. “That’s precisely it. So many people nowadays say things they don’t really mean. George sometimes brings in a friend that talks clever paradoxes and actual absurdities. I can’t always tell what to make of what men say.”

“What could possibly have led you to suspect me for a Socialist?” asked Janeway, with mild curiosity.

“Well, for one thing, you said all human society is contemptible.” Janeway made no response. “Why did you say that?” she persisted.

“I didn’t say it. I said all human government is contemptible. And I said it because it’s so. And I said it,” he added, as if explaining to a young and perhaps intelligent pupil, “sort of by way of confession and avoidance. I admitted what your brother said and introduced new matter to break the force of his argument. I haven’t the least taint of Socialism about me. Though George would object to calling it a ‘taint,’ wouldn’t he?”

“Are we going to get into the war?” she asked.

“I hope not.”

“Why do you hope not?”

“If we do, it will be too late.”

“How so?”

“We should have been preparing for such a war in 1913—earlier would have been better.”

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“Janeway and Robert don’t seem to hit it off very well,” remarked Mrs. Harrison to her husband, after her guests had gone.

Harrison, not liking the observation, put in an objecting question. “How so?” he asked shortly.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just the impression I got at dinner. Bob is always saying something malapropos. Henry didn’t like the dynamiting joke. He carried it, but he wasn’t pleased—neither was Louise, for that matter.”

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