CHAPTER IV

OPENING FOR THE DEFENSE

For more than a minute Floriot stood motionless, but now he was leaning his weight on the hand that held the knob. He listened--half-hoping, half-fearing that he would hear her at the outside door--and then staggered across the room and collapsed into the chair where she had sat, lying with arms and head on the table above the photograph that Jacqueline had kissed. He had won--but to know that he would have found happiness in defeat.

"God!" he groaned aloud. "She's gone! She's gone! And I love her! I love her! And I shall never see her again! She must never see Raymond! Her influence would be----No!" he cried, as if fighting something within himself. "She must never come back. God give me strength to forget!" he prayed in anguish. "Let me forget! Let me forget!"

There was a sound of someone at the door leading to the stairway, and he barely had time to wipe the moisture from his forehead and half-compose himself before Dr. Chennel swung breezily into the room.

"He's doing splendidly!" cried the doctor with a cheery smile. "And he's hungry--the best sign in the world! I have left my orders with the nurses." He began packing his little bag on a side table. "He's to have a little milk and three spoonfuls of soup before he goes to sleep and nothing else until I come again in----Why, what's the matter?" he cried in alarm, hurrying over to his friend as he caught a glimpse of his face. "Are you ill?"

Floriot straightened up and put out his hand. His face was lined and livid and his eyes were wild with grief.

"My dear--doctor!" he said, brokenly, "I have just gone through--the most awful fifteen minutes of my life. My--my wife--has been here!"

"Your wife!" The doctor fell back a step and stared at him. Floriot buried his face in his handkerchief.

"Yes, she has--just gone! You can imagine--how I felt No, you can't!" he cried, bitterly, springing up with clenched fists. "For a moment I was afraid of myself--afraid that I would kill her!"

Dr. Chennel watched the writhing face in silence as Floriot paced wildly up and down the room.

"Doctor, in these few minutes--I have lived five years over again! All the joy, all the miseries, all my love, all her----"

The other stopped him with a gentle touch on the arm.

"Floriot, my friend," he said quietly, "sit down a moment and try to get hold of yourself."

The calm strong voice of the physician had the effect that he desired. Floriot's shoulders squared and his voice grew firm.

"You're right, Doctor. I will forget all about it! Do you know why she came back?" he added bitterly. "Her lover is dead!"

Rose opened the hall door.

"Monsieur Noel has come, sir!"

Floriot nodded.

"Show him in here, Rose," he said quietly and turned to Dr. Chennel. "Noel is an old and very dear friend whom I thought dead until this morning," he explained. "Poor chap! He and I----"

A well-set-up young man--apparently several years younger than Floriot, though his hair was more heavily grayed--entered the library with a springy step and cheery call of:

"Well, here I am! And very much alive!"

His blue eyes were smiling and his white teeth gleamed in the lamplight but his face bore the marks of storms that sweep the soul. And on his right temple was visible the end of a large scar that extended up under the hair.

"My dear old Noel!" exclaimed Floriot, hurrying to meet him with both hands extended. The friends stood with their hands locked and looked each other over with the affection mixed with curiosity that may be marked when two who have been as brothers meet after a long separation. "This is my friend, Dr. Chennel," said Floriot, turning at last. "Shake hands with him, old man! He has just saved my boy's life!"

"Then I'm more than glad to shake you by the hand, Doctor," said Noel, gracefully, as he took the doctor's fingers in his. "For anything that touches Floriot comes very near to me!"

The doctor bowed his appreciation and Floriot, who had never taken his eyes off his friend, remarked with a smile:

"You look in very good health for a dead man." Noel turned and asked with whimsical surprise: "Then you heard of my suicide?"

"Yes," returned his friend gravely, "and the papers said you were dead."

"In the words of a great American humorist," laughed Noel, 'The report was greatly exaggerated!'"

"Two bullets, they said."

"Yes, and they were right," nodded the "suicide," brightly. "But two bullets were not enough for me. I've always been a bit hardheaded, you know, though one of the doctors had another explanation."

The other two looked at him inquiringly, particularly Dr. Chennel, who was prepared to combat any heretical theory.

"When I was on the highway to recovery," resumed Noel, "one of the doctors told me that he didn't think that I would ever get to be marksman enough to hit my brain. Said I ought to practise trying to hit a pea in a wine barrel before I tried it again. Then I found out I could laugh," and he burst into one to prove it, "and decided that as long as I could take enough interest in life to laugh there was no occasion for my going on with my suicide plans."

Dr. Chennel and Floriot joined in the laugh with considerable restraint and the former felt that he was the "undesirable third."

"Well, I must be going," he said, gathering up his hat and bag and shaking hands with both the friends. "You have a good deal to tell each other. I'll be back in the morning," he added to Floriot. Then with many injunctions about the medicine and food he departed.

"And now," said Noel, putting a hand affectionately on each shoulder and holding his friend off at arm's length, "let me have a look at you, Louis, old man!" He paused and gravely scrutinized the smiling face. "Life has not been much kinder to you than to me, judging from your looks," he said at last. The hands fell and he turned away.

"Find me looking old, do you?"

"No, not old for your age," smiled Noel. "How old are you--forty?"

"Thirty-five!" protested Floriot.

"Well, nobody would say that you were a day more than forty-two!" his friend gravely assured him.

"Thank you!" was the ironic response, and they smiled into each other's eyes.

"Fancy! Five whole years since I saw you!"

"And five weeks' separation, in the old days, seemed a century!"

"You're going to stay here all night and take breakfast with me in the morning."

"Most assuredly."

"An early breakfast, though," Floriot smiled a warning. "I have to be in court at nine."

"Ah, of course!" nodded his friend. "You're Deputy Attorney now."

"Yes, I received my promotion more than a year ago."

"I always knew you'd get on!" exclaimed Noel, patting his shoulder.

Floriot turned away with a sigh.

"I have not much to worry about there," he said, without enthusiasm. "But, I want to hear about you, old man! What happened to you? Why did you want to commit suicide. Who was she?"

Noel threw him a quick, searching glance.

"It _was_ a woman," he nodded.

"Of course it was! For some time before you went away I noticed a change in you."

Again there was the sharp look.

"Ah, you did, did you?"

"Yes, you were not as jolly and lively as you had been before," Floriot continued gently. "And you used to be away for days at a time; so I knew it must be a woman. You loved her?"

A long steady gaze answered him.

"And she was false to you?"

"She did not even know I loved her!" was the low response.

"Didn't you tell her?" asked Floriot, surprised.

"No!"

"Why?" he persisted with freedom of a friend. "Was she free?"

"She loved another man," replied Noel. There was not a tremor in his voice but he stood very still and did not meet his friend's questioning eyes. "When I heard of her marriage I felt that my life was of no particular use to me. So," with a shrug of the shoulders, "I tried to get rid of it--and failed. Ridiculous, eh?"

Floriot laid his hand on his friend's arm. The grip of the fingers told his unspoken sympathy.

"Oh, I am used to being a fool!" declared Noel, lightly, but with a sub-current of bitterness in his voice. "I was the fool of the family at home and one of the best jokes they ever had at school. I might have known that the woman I loved would have sense enough to pick out another man. I even made a fool of myself when I tried to take my life!"

"But you were badly hurt?"

"Pretty badly," replied Noel gravely; "but I was soon on my feet again. Then," the shrug again, "having nothing on earth to live for but an occasional laugh--which doesn't cost much--I made a ridiculous amount of money in the Canadian fur business."

"But, why didn't you write to me?" demanded Floriot, reproachfully. Noel turned to him apologetically.

"I wanted to forget and to be forgotten, old man," he said. "The papers reported me dead, and the fact that I didn't die didn't seem to interest them, so I seized the opportunity to stay dead until it suited my pleasure to come to life again."

"Are you married?"

"No!" was the emphatic reply. "I shall never marry!"

"So you still love her?"

Noel made an impatient movement

"I don't want anyone else!" he answered, curtly. "Besides, I'm too old to think of marrying now Let's talk about you, Louis. Are you happy? How is Jacqueline? Little Jennie Wren, we used to call her," he went on with a tenderly reminiscent smile. "What a pretty, lively little thing she was! I suppose she's more quiet now after five years with a solemn old crank like you. Why, Louis! What's the matter?"

Floriot had sunk into an armchair, his face white and drawn. In two strides his friend was beside him, bending over him in alarm.

"Don't--don't worry! It's nothing--nothing!" said Floriot unsteadily. "My child has been at death's door--for the last few days and I thought --I--had lost him. My nerves are just a little--out of joint. That's all!"

"My dear old chap!" cried Noel anxiously, "the boy is all right now?"

"Yes, Raymond's out of danger now." There was a long pause and then in altered tones Noel asked.

"And how old is this Monsieur Raymond?"

"Four."

"Quite a man. Is he your only child?" There was a curious strained quality in his voice. Floriot nodded.

"I will see him, of course?"

Floriot wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and returned it to his pocket. Then he replied more calmly.

"Certainly! In the morning. He can't be disturbed to-night."

There was another long pause broken by Noel.

"Don't tell your wife I'm here," he said. "I want to see her face when she comes in and sees me!" He walked slowly across the room with his back to his friend.

"You--won't see her," was the low reply. Noel turned quickly.

"Oh, she's away?"

Floriot leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands.

"Yes, she's--gone!"

"Gone!" echoed Noel in bewildered astonishment.

Floriot rose and lurched a step or two away. Noel could see less than his profile and barely caught the words, but they were enough to leave him momentarily tongue-tied and paralyzed with amazement.

"She left me--two years ago--with her lover!"

Noel stared at him, dumb with amazement, and stammered something incoherently, of which Floriot could catch only the words, "little Jennie Wren!" in tones of pity. He wheeled on him.

"You pity _her_!"

Noel raised his eyebrows and looked calmly at his friend.

"Is she not to be pitied most?" he asked gently.

"Do you think so?" cried Floriot bitterly. "Then, what of me who adored her--and whose life she wrecked? I am an old man at thirty-five You told me so, yourself! Now, you know why!"

The other half raised his hand and murmured something sympathetic.

"You can never imagine what these last two years have been to me!" Floriot's voice was hoarse with anguish. "I have been tom with jealousy and dreams of vengeance and tortured almost beyond endurance by the memory of the happiness I have lost!" He dropped, shuddering, into a chair, his handkerchief pressed to his face. Noel gazed at him in pitying silence for several minutes. Then he spoke as gently as before.

"And yet, she was not wicked," he said, and Floriot writhed. "She was only frivolous and wanted luxury and pleasure. Life was too serious a problem for her. And you never suspected anything?"

"No!" groaned the figure in the chair. "I loved her and believed in her."

Noel walked over and put his arm affectionately across his friend's bowed shoulders.

"My dear old man, brace up!" he said, with not quite enough cheerfulness to grate. "Remember you have your boy still and--who knows? One of these days, perhaps, she'll be bitterly sorry for the misery she has caused, and you'll see her here again, asking----"

"I have seen her again!"

"She came back then?" asked Noel, dropping back, startled, as Floriot sprang up, his face blazing with anger again.

"This very day she had the impudence----"

"She came back?" repeated Noel's quiet voice, insistently. "And for what?"

"Oh, not for much!" replied Floriot with bitter irony. "Merely to ask my pardon, and to ask me to take her back into my house--in her old place, between my son and myself!"

"And what did you say?" The gentle voice and mild blue eyes were turning hard and metallic. "I told her to go!"

"You turned her out?"

"Turned her out! Of course, I did!" And he stared in astonishment at his friend's set face and narrowed eyes.

"Floriot!" said Noel, sternly, "you have made a mistake! You turned her out in the street without knowing where she was going! My friend, unless, I'm badly mistaken myself, you'll be sorry for this in the morning!"

Floriot stood dumbly for a moment, twice began to speak, and then with a gesture of despair turned away. Noel watched him in silence. Presently he wheeled again, his face calm with some sudden resolve. The pain was in his eyes.

"Will you sit down, old man?" he said, quietly. "I want to tell you something."