Charity let the receiver fall. She had had enough. She sank into a chair
and would have slipped to the floor, but her swimming eyes made out the
blurred face of Hodshon, terrified at her pallor.
If she fainted he would resuscitate her. She could not add that to her
other ignominies. She clenched herself like one great fist of resolution
till the swoon was frustrated. She sat still for a while--then rose, put
on her hat, swathed her face in the veil, and went down the flights of
stairs and out into the cool, dark street.
She had forgotten that she had dismissed the taxicab. Fortunately
another was lurking in the lee of the apartment-house. Hodshon summoned
it and would have ridden home with her, but she forbade him. She passed
on the way the church of Doctor Mosely and his house adjoining. She was
tempted to stop, but she was too weary for more talk.
She slept exceedingly well that night, so well that when she woke she
regretted that she had not slept on out of the world. She fell asleep
again, but was trampled by a nightmare. She woke trying to scream. Her
eyes, opening, found her beautiful room about her and the dream dangers
vanished.
But the horrors of her waking hours of yesterday had not vanished. They
were waiting for her. She could not end them by the closing of her
eyes. In the cool, clear light of day she saw still more problems than
before--problems crying for decisions and contradicting each other
with a hopeless conflict of moralities. To move in any direction was to
commit ugly deeds; to move in no direction was to commit the ugliest of
all.
She rang for her coffee, and she could hardly sit up to it. Her maid
cried out at her age-worn look, and begged her to see a doctor.
“I'm going to as soon as I'm strong enough,” said Charity Coe. But she
meant the Reverend Doctor Mosely. She thought that she could persuade
even him that surgery was necessary upon that marriage. At any rate, she
determined to force a decision from him. She telephoned the unsuspecting
old darling, and he readily consented to see her. She spent an hour or
two going over her Bible and concordance. They gave her little comfort
in her plight.
When finally she dragged herself from her home to Doctor Mosely's his
butler ushered her at once into the study. Doctor Mosely welcomed her
both as a grown-up child and as an eminent dealer in good deeds.
She went right at her business. “Doctor Mosely, I loathe myself for
adding to the burdens your parish puts upon your dear shoulders but
you're responsible for my present dilemma.”
“My dear child, you don't tell me! Then you must let me help you out of
it. But first tell me--what I'm responsible for.”
“You married me to Peter Cheever.”
“Why, yes, I believe I did. I marry so many dear girls. Yes, I remember
your wedding perfectly. A very pretty occasion, and you looked
extremely well. So did the bridegroom. I was quite proud of joining two
such--such--”
“Please unjoin us.”
“Great Heavens, my child! What are you saying?”
“I am asking you to untie the knot you tied.”
The old man stared at her, took his glasses off, rubbed them, put them
on, and peered into her face to make sure of her. Then he said:
“If that were in my power--and you know perfectly well that it is
not--it would be a violation of all that I hold sacred in matrimony.”
“Just what do you hold sacred, Doctor Mosely?”
“Dear, dear, this will never do. Really, I don't wish to take advantage
of my cloth, but, really, you know, Charity, you have been taught better
than to snap at the clergy like that.”
“Forgive me; I'm excited, not irreverent. But--well, you don't believe
in divorce, do you?”
“I have stated so with all the power of my poor eloquence.”
“Do you believe that the seventh commandment is the least important of
the lot?”
“Certainly not!”
“If a man breaks any commandment he ought to do what he can to remedy
the evil?”
“Yes.”
“Then if a man violates the seventh, why shouldn't he be compelled to
make restitution, too?”
“What restitution could he make?”
“Not much. He has taken from the girl he marries her name, her
innocence, her youth--he can restore only one thing--her freedom.”
“That is not for him to restore. 'What, therefore, God hath joined, let
not man put asunder.'”
The old man grew majestic when he thundered the sonorities of Holy Writ.
Charity was cowed, but she made a craven protest:
“But who is to say what God hath joined?”
“The marriage sacraments administered by the ordained clergy established
that. There is every warrant for clergymen to perform marriages; no
Christian clergyman pretends to undo them.”
“You believe that marriage is an indissoluble sacrament, then?”
“Indeed I do.”
“Who made my marriage a sacrament?”
“I did, as the agent of God.”
“And the minute you pronounce a couple married they are registered in
heaven, and God completes the union?”
“You may put it as you please; the truth is divine.”
“In other words, a man like you can pronounce two people man and wife,
but once the words have escaped his lips nothing can ever correct the
mistake.”
“There are certain conditions which annul a marriage, but once it is
genuinely ratified on earth it is ratified in heaven.”
“In heaven, where, as the New Testament says in several places, married
people do not live together? The woman who had seven husbands on earth,
you know, didn't have any at all in heaven.”
“So Christ answered the Sadducee who tempted him with questions.”
“Marriage is strictly a matter of the earth, earthy, then?”
“Nothing is strictly that, my child. But what in the name of either
earth or heaven has led you to come over here and break into my
morning's work with such a fusillade of childish questions? You know a
child can ask questions that a wise man cannot answer. Also, a child can
ask questions which a wise man can answer to another wise man but not to
a child. You talk like an excited, an unreasoning girl. I am surprised
to hear you ridiculing the institution of Christian marriage, but your
ridicule does not prove it to be ridiculous.”
“Oh, it's not ridiculous to me, Doctor Mosely; and I'm not ridiculing
it. I am horribly afraid of what it has done to me and will do to me.”
“Explain that, my dear.”
She did explain with all bluntness: “My husband openly lives with a
mistress. He prefers her to me.”
The old man was stunned. He faltered: “Dear me!”
“That is most reprehensible--most! He should be subjected to discipline.”
“Whose? He isn't a member of your church. And how can you discipline
such a man--especially as you don't believe in divorce?”
“Have you tried to win him back to the path of duty, to waken him to a
realizing sense of his obliquity?”
“Often and long. It can't be done, for he loves the other woman.”
“Don't use the beautiful word love for such a debasing impulse.”
“But I know he loves her!”
“How could you know?”
“I heard him tell her.”
“You heard him! Do you ask me to believe that he told her that in your
presence?”
“I heard him on the dictagraph.”
“You have been collecting evidence for divorce, then?”
“No, I was collecting it to assure myself that the gossip I had heard
was false--and to submit to you.”
“But why to me?”
“When I first learned of this hideous situation my first impulse was to
rush to the courts. I went to church instead. I heard your sermon. It
stopped me from seeing a lawyer.”
“I am glad my poor words have served some useful end.”
“But have they?”
“If I have prevented one divorce I have not lived in vain.”
“You don't think I have a right to ask for one?”
“Absolutely and most emphatically not.”
“In spite of anything he may do?”
“Anything! He will come back to you, Charity. Possess your soul in
patience. It may be years, but keep the light burning and he will
return.”
“In what condition?”
“My child, you shock me! You've been reading the horrible literature
that gets printed under the guise of science.”
“I must wait, then?”
“Yes, if you wish to separate from him for a time, your absence might
waken him to a realizing sense. There are no children, I believe.”
“None, yet.”
“Yet? Oh, then--”
“If there were, would it make a difference?”
“Of course! an infinite difference!”
“You think a man and woman ought to let their child keep them together
in any event?”
“Need I say it? What greater bond of union could there be? Is it not
God's own seal and blessing on the wedlock, rendering it, so to speak,
even more indissoluble? You blush, my child. Is it true, then, that--”
“A child is expected.”
“Ah, my dear girl! How that proves what I have maintained! The birth
of the little one will bring the errant father to his senses. The tiny
hands will unite its parents as if they were the hands of a priest
drawing them together. That child is the divine messenger confirming the
sacrament.”
“You believe that?”
“Utterly. Oh, I am glad. Motherhood is the crowning triumph; it hallows
any woman howsoever lowly or wicked. And you are neither, Charity. I
know you to be good and busy in good works. But were you never so evil,
this heavenly privilege would make of you a very vessel of sanctity.”
Charity turned pale as she sprung the trap. “The child is expected--not
by me, but by the other woman.”
Doctor Mosely's beatitude turned to a sick disgust. Red and white
streaked his face. His first definite reaction was wrath at the trick
that had been played upon him.
“Mrs. Cheever! This is unworthy of you! You distress me! Really!”
“I was a little distressed myself. What am I to do?”
“I will not believe what you say.”
“I heard her confess it--boast of it. She agrees with you that the tiny
hands will bring her and the father together and confirm the sacrament.”
“It can't be. It must not be!”
“You don't advocate that form of birth-control? They are arresting
people who preach prevention of conception. You are not so modern as
that.”
“Hush!”
“What am I to do? You advise me to possess my soul in patience for
years. But the child won't wait that long. Doesn't the situation alter
your opinion of divorce?”
“No!”
“But if I don't divorce Mr. Cheever and let him marry her the child will
have no father--legally.”
“The responsibility is his, not yours.”
“You don't believe in infant damnation, do you? At least not on earth,
do you?”
“I cannot control the evil impulses of others. The doctrines of the
Church cannot be modified for the convenience of every sinner.”
“You advise against divorce, then?”
“I am unalterably opposed to it.”
“What is your solution, then, of this situation?”
“I shall have to think it over--and pray. Please go. You have staggered
me.”
“When you have thought it over will you give me the help of your
advice?”
“Certainly.”
“Then shall I wait till I hear from you?”
“If you will.”
“Good-by, Doctor Mosely.”
“Good-by, Mrs.--Charity--my child!”
He pressed her long hand in his old palms. He was trembling. He was like
a priest at bay before the altar while the arrows of the infidel rain
upon him. These arrows were soft as rain and keen as silk. He was more
afraid of them than if they had been tipped with flint or steel.
Charity left the parsonage no wiser than she entered it. She had
accomplished nothing further than to ruin Doctor Mosely's excellent
start on an optimistic discourse in the prevailing fashion of the
enormously popular “Pollyanna” stories: it was to be a “glad” sermon, an
inexorably glad sermon. But poor Doctor Mosely could not preach it now
in the face of this ugly fact.
Charity went home with her miserable triumph, which only emphasized her
defeat.
She found at home a mass of details pressing for immediate action if the
big moving-picture project were not to lapse into inanity. The mere toil
of such a task ought to have been welcomed, at least as a diversion. But
her heart was as if dead in her.
She wondered how Jim Dyckman was progressing with his portion of the
task. He had not reported to her. She wondered why.
She decided to telephone him. She put out her hand, but did not lift the
receiver from the hook. She began to muse upon Jim Dyckman. She began to
think strange thoughts of him. If she had married him she might not have
failed so wretchedly to find happiness. Of course, she might have failed
more wretchedly and more speedily, but the wayfarer who chooses one of
two crossroads and meets a wolf upon it does not believe that a lion was
waiting on the other.