“I'm sorry to do anything to interfere with your welfare, Jim, for if I

win she wins you; but you can get rid of her some other way. The little

beast! She thinks she can make use of me as a bridge to cross over to

her Marquess, but she can't!”

“Her Marquess?” Jim mumbled. “What does that mean?”

Charity regretted her impetuous speech, but McNiven explained it.

Jim was pretty well deadened to shocks by this time, but the news that

his wife had been disloyal found an untouched spot in his heart to stab.

It gave him a needed resentment, however, and a much-needed something to

feel wronged about.

He caught a spark of Charity's blazing anger, and they resolved to fight

the case to the limit. And that was where it took them.

CHAPTER X

Once the battle was joined, a fierce desire for haste impelled all of

these people. Kedzie dreaded every hour's delay as a new risk of losing

Strathdene, who was showing an increasing rage at having the name of his

wife-to-be bandied about in the press, with her portraits in formal pose

or snapped by batteries of reporters.

Her lawyer emphasized the heartbreak it was to her to learn that her

adored husband had been led astray by her trusted friend. This did not

make pleasant reading for the jealous Strathdene, and he wished himself

jolly well out of the whole affair.

It was not long before his own name began to slip into the case by

innuendo. Once he was in, he could not decently abandon his Kedzie,

though he had to prove his devotion by denying it and threatening to

shoot anybody who implied that his interest in Mrs. Dyckman was anything

more than formal.

Jim Dyckman was impatient to have done with the suit, however it ended.

He was tossed on both horns of the dilemma. He was compelled to fight

one woman to save another. He could not defend Charity without striking

Kedzie and he could not spare Kedzie without destroying Charity.

In a situation that would have overwhelmed the greatest tacticians he

floundered miserably. He vowed that whatever the outcome of the case

might be, he would never look at a woman again. Men find it very easy to

condemn womankind _en bloc_, and they are forever forswearing the sex as

if it were a unit or a bad habit.

During the necessary delay in reaching trial Jim asked and received an

extension of his leave of absence; then his regiment came home from the

Border and was mustered out of the Federal service and received again

into the State control. Jim felt almost as much ashamed of involving his

regiment in his scandal as Charity.

He had suffered so greatly from the embarrassment of the publicity that

he could hardly endure to face his regiment and drill with his company.

He offered his resignation again, but it was not accepted.

In fact, under the new condition of the National Guard service, his

immediate officers had nothing to do with his resignation.

The probability of a call to arms, not against Mexico, but against the

almost almighty German Empire, was so great that it looked like slackery

or cowardice to ask to be excused. His next dread was that the regiment

would be mustered in before the case was finished, compelling its

postponement and leaving Charity to languish unrevenged.

For his inclusive anger at Everywoman soon changed back to deeper

affection than ever. The first sight of her on the witness-stand at the

mercy of the inquisition of the unscrupulous Beattie brought back all

his old emotions for her and unnumbered new.

He had seen a picture of one of the Christian martyrs whose torture

was inflicted on her by a man armed with steel pincers to pluck off her

flesh from her shuddering soul bit by bit. It seemed to him that his

sainted Charity was condemned to like atrocity. Her hands were bound by

the thongs of the law, her body was stripped to the eyes of the crowd,

and the tormentor went here and there, nipping at the quick with

intolerable cruelty.

And Jim must not go to her rescue. He must not protest or lift a hand in

her behalf. He must sit and suffer with her while the anguish squeezed

the big sweat out of his knotted brows.

It had been hard enough to await the appearance of the case on the

docket, to sit through the selection of the jury, and to study the

gradual recruitment of that squad of twelve sphinxes, all commonplace,

yet mysterious, lacking in all divinity of comprehension and eager to be

entertained with an exciting conflict.

The fact that a woman was the plaintiff was a tremendous handicap for

Jim, even though a woman was allied with him in the defense. The very

name “co-respondent” condemned her in advance in the public mind. And

then she was rich and therefore dissipated in the minds of those who

cannot imagine wealth as providing other fascinating businesses besides

vice. And Jim was wealthy and therefore a proper object for punishment.

If he had earned his millions it must have been by tyrannous corruption;

if he had only inherited them that was worse yet.

Beattie lost no chance to play on the baser phases of the noble and

essential suspicions of the democratic soul and also on Kedzie's humble

origin, her child-like prettiness proving absolutely a child-like

innocence and trust, and the homely simplicity of her parents, who,

being poor and ignorant, were therefore inevitably virtuous and sincere.

Jim had realized from the first what a guilty aspect his unfortunate

excursion with Charity must wear in the eyes of any one but her and him.

Even the waiter who was on the ground had unwittingly conspired with

their delicacy to put them in a most indelicate situation. Skip went

on the stand, reveling in his first experience of fame, basking in the

spot-light like a cheap actor, and acting very badly, yet well enough

for the groundlings he amused.

Jim and Charity underwent a martyrdom of ridicule during his testimony.

A man and woman riding backward on a mule through a jeering mob might

seem pathetic enough if one had the heart to deny himself the laughter,

but Jim and Charity made their grotesque pilgrimage without exciting

sympathy.

Beattie had tried to get Mrs. Noxon on the stand to confirm the proof

that Charity had spent the night away, but the old lady showed her

contempt of the court and of the submarines by sailing for Europe to

escape the ordeal. The chauffeur, the valet, and the Viewcrest servants

were enough, however, to corroborate Skip Magruder's story beyond any

assailing, and handwriting experts had no difficulty in convincing

the jury that Jim's signature on the hotel register was in his own

handwriting. He had made no effort to disguise it or even to change his

name till the last of it was well begun.

Mr. and Mrs. Thropp made splendid witnesses for their child and the old

mother's tears melted a jury that had never seen her weep for meaner

reasons.

When Charity reached the stand the case against her was so complete that

all her bravery was gone. She felt herself a fool for having brought the

ordeal on herself. She took not even self-respect with her to the chair

of torture.

CHAPTER XI

In the good old days of Hester Prynne they published a faithless wife by

sewing a scarlet “A” upon the bosom of her dress. Nowadays the word is

pronounced “co-respondent,” and it may be affixed to any woman's name by

any newspaper, or any plaintiff in a divorce case.

So fearful a power was so much abused that since 1911 in New York the

co-respondent has been permitted to come into the court and oppose the

label. It is in sort a revival of the ancient right to trial by ordeal.

This hideous privilege of proving innocence by walking unshod over hot

plowshares is most frigidly set forth in the statute where the lawyer's

gift for putting terrible things in desiccated phrases was never better

shown than in Section 1757.

In an action brought to obtain a divorce on the ground of adultery,

the plaintiff or defendant may serve a copy of his pleading on the

co-respondent named therein. At any time within twenty days after such

service on said co-respondent he may appear to defend such action, so

far as the issues affect such co-respondent. If no such service be made,

then at any time before the entry of judgment any co-respondent named in

any of the pleadings shall have the right, at any time before the entry

of judgment, to appear either in person or by attorney in said action

and demand of plaintiff's attorney a copy of the summons and complaint,

which must be served within ten days thereafter, and he may appear to

defend such action, so far as the issues affect such co-respondent.

In case no one of the allegations of adultery controverted by such

co-respondent shall be proved, such co-respondent shall be entitled to a

bill of costs against the person naming him as such co-respondent, which

bill of costs shall consist only of the sum now allowed by law as a

trial fee, and disbursements, and such co-respondent shall be entitled

to have an execution issue for the collection of the same.

The exact amount of money was set forth in another place, in Section

3251, where it is stated that the sums obtainable are “for trial of an

issue of fact, $30, and when the trial necessarily occupies more than

two days, $10 in addition thereto.”

In other words, Mrs. Charity Coe Cheever, finding her life of good works

and pure deeds crowned with the infamy which Mrs. Kedzie Dyckman in her

anger and her haste pressed on her brow, had the full permission of the

law to come into the public court, face a vitriolic lawyer, and deny her

guilt.

If she survived the trip through hell she could collect from her accuser

forty dollars to pay her lawyer with. The priceless boon of such a

vindication she could keep for herself. And that ended her.

This is only one of the numberless vicious and filthy and merciless

consequences of the things done in the name of virtue by those who

believe divorce to be so great an evil that they will commit every other

evil in order to oppose it.

In no other realm of law and punishment has severity had more need of

hypocrisy to justify itself than in the realm of wedlock. What grosser

burlesque could there be than the conflict between the theory and the

practice? The law and the Church, claiming what few people will deny,

that marriage is an immensely solemn, even a sacred, condition, have

made entrance into it as easy as possible and the escape from it as

difficult. It is as if one were to say, “Revolvers are very dangerous

weapons, therefore they shall be placed within the reach of infants, but

they must on no account be taken away from them, and once grasped they

must never be laid down.”

The most stringent rules have been formulated to prevent those people

from marrying each other who are least likely to want to--namely, blood

relations. But there is no law against total strangers meeting at the

altar for the first time, and the marriage by proxy of people who have

never seen each other has had the frequent blessing of ecclesiastic

pomp.

At a time when legal divorce was too horrible to contemplate they

made very pretty festivals of betrothing little children who could

not understand the ceremony or even parrot the pledge. Who indeed can

understand the pledge before its meaning is made clear by life?

And why should people be forced to make an eternal pledge whose keeping

is beyond their power or prophecy and from which there is no release?

What is it but a subornation of perjury?

Those who so blithely scatter flowers before bridal couples and

old shoes after them are perfectly benevolent, of course, in their

abhorrence of separating the twain if they begin to throw their old

shoes at each other; for they are sincerely convinced that if people

were permitted to do as they pleased, nothing on earth would please

them but vice. And so those who have the lawmaking itch set about saving

humanity from itself by making inhuman laws, which the clever and the

criminal evade or break through, leaving the gentle and the timid in the

net.

For there was never no divorce. No amount of law has ever availed to

keep those together who had the courage or the cruelty to break the

bonds. By hook or by crook, if not by book, they will be free.

The question of the children is often used to cloud the issue, as if all

that children needed for their welfare were the formal alliance of

their parents, and as if a home where hatred rages or complacent vice is

serene were the ideal rearing-ground for the young. When love of their

children is enough to keep two incompatible souls together there is

no need of the law. When that love is insufficient what can the law

accomplish? And what of the innumerable families where there have been

no children, or where they are dead or grown-up?

The experiment of forbidding what cannot be prevented and of refusing

legal sanction to what human nature demands has been given centuries of

trial with no success.

Marriage is among the last of the institutions to have the daylight let

in and the windows thrown open. For the home is no more threatened by

liberty than the State is, and that pair which is kept together only

by the shackles of the law is already divorced; its cohabitation is a

scandal. Free love in the promiscuous sense is no uglier than coupled

loathing. The social life of that community where divorce is least free

is no purer than that where divorce is not difficult. Otherwise South

Carolina, which alone of the States permits no divorce on any ground,

should be an incomparable Eden of marital innocence. Is it? And New

York, which has only one ground, and that the scriptural, should be the

next most innocent. Is it?

Meanwhile the mismated of our day who are struggling through the

transition period between the despotism of matrimony and its republic

can be sure that the righteous will omit no abuse that they can inflict.

Those who would free Russias must face Siberias.

The worst phase of it is that some of those who are determined to be

free and cannot otherwise get free will not hesitate to destroy innocent

persons who may be useful to their escape.

Mrs. Kedzie Dyckman had her heart set on releasing herself from the

husband she had in order that she might try another who promised her

more happiness, more love, and more prestige. The husband she had would

have been willing enough to set her free, both because he liked to

give her whatever she wanted and because he was not in love with their

marriage himself.

But the law of New York State says that married couples shall not

uncouple amicably and intelligently. If they will part it must be with

bitterness and laceration. One of the two must be driven out through the

ugly gate of adultery. They must part as enemies and they must sacrifice

some third person as a blood-offering on the altar.

It is a strange thing that the lamb, which is the symbol of innocence

and harmlessness, should have always been the favorite for sacrifice.

Charity Coe had happened along at the convenient moment.

CHAPTER XII

“Mrs. Charity Coe Cheever, take the stand....”

“Ju swear tell tru thole tru noth buth tru thelpugod?”

“I do.”

McNiven, in the direct examination, asked only such questions as

Charity easily answered with proud denials of guilt. Beattie began the

cross-examination with a sneering scorn of her good faith.

“Mrs. Cheever, you are the co-respondent in this case of Dyckman

_versus_ Dyckman?”

“I am.”

“And on this night you went motoring with defendant?”

“Yes.”

“Was his wife with you?”

“No; you see--”

“Was any other person with you?”

“You see, it was a new car and it was only our intention to--”

“Was any other person with you?”

“No.”

“And you spent the night with the defendant in the Viewcrest Inn?”

“That is hardly the way I should put it.”

“Answer the question, please.”

“I will not answer such an insulting question.”

“I beg your pardon most humbly. Were you registered as the defendant's

wife?”

McNiven's voice: “I 'bject. There is no evidence witness even saw the

book.”

The judge: “Objection s'tained.”

“Well, then, Mrs. Cheever, did you see the defendant write in the book?”

“I--I--perhaps I did--”

“Perhaps you did. You heard the waiter Magruder testify here awhile ago

that he insisted on defendant registering, and defendant reluctantly

complied. Do you remember that?”

“I--I--I believe I do. But I didn't see what he wrote.”

“You didn't see what he wrote. Exhibit A shows that he wrote '_Mr. and

Mrs. James Dysart_.' You heard the handwriting experts testify that the

writing was Dyckman's. But you did not see the writing. Did you not,

however, hear the waiter speak of you as the defendant's wife?”

“Well--I may have heard him.”

“You didn't tell him that you were not the defendant's wife?”

“I didn't speak to the waiter at all. It was a very embarrassing

situation.”

“It must have been. So you did not deny that you were the defendant's

wife?”

“You see, it was like this. When Mr. Dyckman asked me to try his new

car--”

“You did not deny that you were the defendant's wife?”

“I hadn't the faintest idea that we could have gone so far--”

“Answer the question!”

“But I'm coming to that--”

The judge: “Witness will answer question.”

“But, your Honor, can't I explain? Has he a right to ask these horrible

things in that horrible way?”

The lawyer: “We are trying to get at the horrible truth. But if you

prefer not to answer I will not press the point. The waiter showed you

to the parlor, saying that the rest of the hotel was occupied?”

“Yes.”

“He left you there together, you and the defendant?”

“Well, he went away, but--”

“And left you together. He so testified. He also testified that he found

you together the next morning. Is that true?”

“Oh, that's outrageous. I refuse to answer.”

Jim Dyckman rose from his chair in a frenzy of wrath. His lawyer,

McNiven, pressed him back and pleaded with him in a whisper to remember

the court. He yielded helplessly, cursing himself for his disgraceful

lack of chivalry.

The judge spoke sternly. “Witness will answer questions of counsel or--”

“But, your Honor, he is trying to make me say that I--Oh, it's

loathsome. I didn't. I didn't. He has no right!”

When a woman's hair is caught in a traveling belt and she is drawn

backward, screaming, into the wheels of a great machinery that will

mangle her beauty if it does not helplessly murder her there are not

many people whose hearts are hard enough to withhold pity until they

learn whether or not her plight was due to carelessness.

There are always a few, however, who will add their blame to her burden,

and they usually invoke the name of justice for their lethargy of

spirit.

Yet even the cruelty of that severity is a form of self-protection

against a shattering grief; and a perfect heart would have pity even

for the pitiless, since they, too, are the victims of their own

carelessness; they, too, are drawn backward into the soul-crushing cogs

of the world.

Mrs. Charity Coe Cheever, as good a woman as ever was, was being dragged

to the meeting-point of great wheels, but she had turned about and was

fighting to escape, at least with what was dearer than her life. The

pain and the terror were supreme, and even if she wrenched free from

destruction it would be at the cost of lasting scars. Yet she fought.

It had been all too easy for the infuriated Kedzie Dyckman to entangle

Charity in the machinery. Kedzie was a little terrified at the

consequences of her own act, though she would have said that she did

it in self-defense and to punish an outrage upon her rights. But when

persons set out to punish other persons, it is not often that their own

hands are altogether innocent.

If the Christly edict, “Let him that is without sin cast the first

stone,” had been followed out there would never have been another stone

cast. And one might ask if the world would have been, or could have

been, the worse for that abstention. For, whatever else may be true, the

venerable practices of justice have been false and futile.

And now, nearly two thousand years later, after two thousand years

more of heartbreaking history, an increasing few are asking bitterly if

punishment has ever paid.

Vaguely imagining on one side the infinite misery and ugliness of the

dungeons and tortures, the disgraces and executions of the ages with

their counter-punishment on the inquisitors and the executioners, and

setting against them that uninterrupted stream of deeds we call crimes,

what is the picture but a ghastly vanity--an eternal process of trying

to dam the floods of old Nile by flinging in forever poor wretch after

poor wretch to drown unredeemed and unavailing?

Charity was the latest sacrifice. If she had been guilty of loving

too wildly well, or of drifting unconsciously into a situation where

opportunity made temptation irresistible, there would be a certain

reaction to pity after she had been definitely condemned. There are

at times advantages in weakness, as women well know, though Charity

despised them now.

Kedzie's lawyer, however, felt it good tactics to assume now the pose

of benevolent patience with an erring one. Seeing that Charity was

in danger of stirring the hearts of the jurors by her suffering, he

forestalled their sympathy and murmured:

“I will wait till Mrs. Cheever has regained control of herself.”

Instantly Charity's pride quickened in her. She wanted none of that

beast's pity. She responded to the strange sense of discipline before

fate that makes a man walk soldierly to the electric chair; inspires

a caught spy to stand placidly before his own coffin and face the

firing-squad; led Joan of Arc after one panic of terror to wait serene

among the crackling fagots.

The lawyer was relieved. He had been afraid that Charity would weep. He

resumed the probe:

“And now, Mrs. Cheever, if you are quite calm I will proceed. I regret

the necessity of asking these questions, but you were not compelled to

come into court. You came of your own volition, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“Witnesses have testified and you have not denied that you arrived at

the Viewcrest Inn late at night; that you saw the defendant register;

that you and he went to the only room left; that the waiter left you

together and found you together the next morning. You have heard that

testimony, have you not?”

“Yes.”

“Knowing all this, do you still claim that your conduct was above

reproach?”

“For discretion, no. I was foolish and indiscreet.”

“And that was all?”

“Yes.”

“You are innocent of the charge, then?”

“Yes.”

“Do you ask the jury to believe you?”

“I ask them to--yes! Yes! I ask them to.”

“Do you expect them to?”

“Oh, they ought to.”

“If you had been guilty of misconduct would you admit it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you expect them to believe that?”

“If they knew me they would.”

“Well, we haven't all the privilege of knowing you as well as the

defendant does. You may step down, Mrs. Cheever, thank you.”

McNiven rose. “One moment, Mrs. Cheever. You testified on direct

examination that the defendant left you immediately after the waiter

did?”

“Yes.”

“And that he did not return till the next morning, just before the

waiter returned.”

“Yes.”

“That is all, Mrs. Cheever.”

McNiven would have done better to leave things alone. The sturdy last

answer of Charity and the unsportsmanlike sneer of Kedzie's lawyer had

inclined the jury her way. McNiven's explanation awoke again the skeptic

spirit.

Charity descended from her pillory with a feeling that she had said none

of the things she had planned to say. The eloquence of her thoughts had

seemed incompatible somehow with the witness-stand. At a time when she

needed to say so much she had said so little and all of it wrong.

CHAPTER XIII

Jim Dyckman's heart was so wrung with pity for Charity when she stepped

down and sought her place in a haze of despair that he resolved to make

a fight for her himself. He insisted on McNiven's calling him to the

stand, though McNiven begged him to let ill enough alone.

He took the oath with a fierce enthusiasm that woke the jury a little,

and he answered his own lawyer's questions with a fervor that stirred a

hope in the jury's heart, a sorely wrung heart it was, for its pity for

Charity was at war with its pity for Kedzie, and its admiration for Jim

Dyckman, who was plainly a gentleman and a good sport even if he had

gone wrong, could only express itself by punishing Kedzie, whose large

eyes and sweet mouth the jury could not ignore or resist.

When his own lawyer had elicited from Jim the story as he wanted it

told, which chanced to be the truth, McNiven abandoned him to Beattie

with the words:

“Your witness.”

Beattie was in fine fettle. He had become a name talked about

transcontinentally, and now he was crossing swords with the famous

Dyckman. And Dyckman was at a hideous disadvantage. He could only parry,

he could not counter-thrust. There was hardly a trick forbidden to the

cross-examiner and hardly a defense permitted to the witness.

And yet that very helplessness gave the witness a certain shadowy aide

at his side.

Jim's heart was beating high with his fervor to defend Charity, but it

stumbled when Beattie rose and faced him. And Beattie faced him a long

while before he spoke.

A slow smile crept over the lawyer's mien as he made an excuse for

silence out of the important task of scrubbing his eye-glasses.

Before that alkaline grin Jim felt his faith in himself wavering. He

remembered unworthy thoughts he had entertained, graceless things he had

done; he felt that his presence here as a knight of unassailable purity

was hypocritical. He winced at all points from the uncertainty as to the

point to be attacked. His life was like a long frontier and his enemy

was mobilized for a sudden offensive. He would know the point selected

for the assault when he felt the assault. The first gun was that popular

device, a supposititious question.

“Mr. Dyckman, you are accused of--well, we'll say co-respondence with

the co-respondent. You have denied your guilt in sundry affidavits and

on the witness-stand here. Remembering the classic and royal ideal of

the man who 'perjured himself like a gentleman,' and assuming--I say

'assuming' what you deny--that you had been guilty, would you have

admitted it?”

“I could not have been guilty.”

“Could not? Really! you astonish me! And why not, please?”

“Because Mrs. Cheever would never have consented. She is a good woman.”

This unexpected answer to the old trick question jolted Beattie

perceptibly and brought the jury forward a little. The tears gushed to

Charity's eyes and she felt herself unworthy a champion so pious.

Beattie acknowledged the jolt with a wry smile and returned:

“Very gallant, Mr. Dyckman; you want to be a gentleman and avoid the

perjury, too. But I must ask you to answer the question. Suppose you had

been guilty.”

Silence.

“Answer the question!”

Silence.

“Will his Honor kindly instruct the witness to answer the question?”

Jim broke in, “His Honor cannot compel me to suppose something that is

impossible.”

The jury rejoiced unwillingly, like the crowd in the bleachers when a

man on the opposing team knocks a home run. The jury liked Jim better.

But what they liked, after all, was what they falsely imagined. They

assumed that Jim had been out on a lark and got caught and was putting

up a good scrap for his lady friend. He was a hum-dinger, and no wonder

the lady fell for him. Into such slang their souls translated the

holiness of his emotions, and they voted him guilty even in awarding him

their admiration for his defense.

Beattie paused again, then suddenly asked, “Mr. Dyckman, how long have

you loved Mrs. Cheever?”

“What do you mean by 'loved'?”

“It is a familiar word. Answer the question.”

“I have admired Mrs. Cheever since she was a child. We have always been

friends.”

“Your 'friendship' was considerably excited when she married Mr.

Cheever, wasn't it?”

“I--I thought he was unworthy of her.”

“Was that why you beat him up in a fist fight at your club?”

This startled the entire court. Even reporters who had missed the news

were excited. McNiven sprang to his feet, crying:

“I 'bject! There is no evidence before the court that there ever was

such a fight. The question is incompirrelvimmaterial.”

“S'tained!” said the judge.

Beattie was satisfied. The arrow had been pulled out, but its poison

remained. He made use of another of his tantalizing pauses, then:

“It was shortly afterward that Mrs. Cheever divorced her husband, was it

not?”

“I 'bject,” McNiven barked.

“S'tained!” the judge growled.

“Let us get back to the night when you and Mrs. Cheever went

a-motoring.” Beattie smiled. “There was a beautiful moon on that

occasion, I believe.”

The jury grinned. The word “moon” meant foolishness. Beattie took Jim

through the story of that ride and that sojourn at the tavern, and

every question he asked condemned Jim to a choice of answers, either

alternative making him out ridiculously virtuous or criminal.

Beattie rehearsed the undenied facts, but substituted for the glamour of

innocence in bad luck the sickly glare of cynicism. He asked Jim if he

had ever heard of the expression, “The time, the place, and the girl.”

He had the jury snickering at the thought of a big rich youth like

Jim being such a ninny, such a milksop and mollycoddle, as to defy an

opportunity so perfect.

The public mind has its dirt as well as its grandeurs; the pool that

mirrors the sky is easily roiled and muddied. It was possible for the

same people to abhor Jim and Charity for being guilty and to feel that

if they were not guilty with such an occasion they were still more

contemptible.

Thus ridicule, which shakes down the ancient wrongs and the tyrants'

pretenses, shakes down also the ancient virtues and the struggling

ideals.

Finally Beattie said, “You say you left the fair corespondent alone in

the hotel parlor?”

“I did.”

“All alone?”

“Yes.”

“And you went out into the night, as the saying is?”

“Yes.”

“But you testified that it was raining.”

“It was.”

“You went out into the rain?”

“Yes.”

“To cool your fevered brow?”

Silence from Jim; shrieks of laughter from the silly spectators. The

jury was shattered with amusement; the judge wiped a grin from his lips.

Beattie resumed:

“Where did you sleep?”

“In the office chair.”

“You paid for the parlor! You registered! And you slept in the chair!”

[Gales of laughter. His Honor threatens to clear the court.] “Who saw

you asleep in the chair?”

“I don't know--I was asleep.”

“Are you sure that you did not just dream about the chair?”

“I am sure.”

“That's all.”

Jim stepped down, feeling idiotic.

There is a dignity that survives and is illumined by flames

of martyrdom, but there is no dignity that is improved by a

bladder-buffeting. Jim slunk back to his place and cowered, while the

attorneys made their harangues.

McNiven spoke with passion and he had the truth on his side, but it

lacked the convincing look. Beattie rocked the jury-box with laughter

and showed a gift for parodying seriousness that would carry him far on

his career. Then he switched to an ardent defense of the purity of the

American home, and ennobled the jury to a knighthood of chivalry and

of democracy. As he pointed out, the well-known vices of the rich make

every household unsafe unless they are sternly checked by the dread hand

of the law.

He called upon the jury to inflict on the Lothario a verdict that would

not only insure comfort to the poor little woman whose home had

been destroyed, but would also be severe enough to make even a

multimillionaire realize and remember that the despoiler of the American

home cannot continue on his nefarious path with impunity.

The judge gave a long and solemn charge to the jury. It was fair

according to the law and the evidence, but the evidence had been juggled

by the fates.

The jury retired and remained a hideous while.

CHAPTER XIV

It was only a pleasant clubby discussion of the problem of Jim's and

Charity's innocence that delayed the jury's verdict. One or two of the

twelve had a sneaking suspicion that they had told the truth, but these

were laughed out of their wits by the wiser majority who were not such

fools as to believe in fairy-stories.

As one of the ten put it: “That Dyckman guy may have gone out into the

rain, but, believe me, he knew enough to come in out of the wet.”

A very benevolent old gentleman who sympathized with everybody concerned

made a little speech:

“It seems to me, gentlemen, that when a man and wife have quarreled as

bitterly as those two and have taken their troubles to court, there is

no use trying to force them together again. If we give a verdict of not

guilty, that will leave Mr. and Mrs. Dyckman married. But they must hate

each other by now and that would mean lifelong misery and sin for both.

So I think we will save valuable time and satisfy everybody best by

giving a verdict of guilty. It won't hurt Dyckman any.”

“What about Mrs. Cheever?”

“Oh, she's gotta lotta money.”

None of the jury had ever had so much as that and it was equivalent to

a good time and the answer to all prayers, so they did not fret about

Charity's future. On the first ballot, after a proper reminiscence of

the amusing incidents of the trial they proceeded to a decision. The

verdict was unanimous that Jim was guilty as charged. Charity was not to

get her forty dollars nor her good name.

When the jurors filed back into the box the court came to attention and

listened to the verdict.

Jim and Charity were dazed as if some footpad had struck them over

the head with a slingshot. Kedzie was hysterical with relief. She had

suffered, too, throughout the trial. And now she had been vindicated.

She went to the jury and she shook hands with each member and thanked

him.

“You know I accept the verdict as just one big beautiful birthday

present.” It was not her birthday, but it sounded well, and she added,

“I shall always remember your kindly faces. Never can I forget one of

you.”

Two days later she met one of the unforgetable jurors on the street

and did not recognize him. He had been one-twelfth of her knightly

champions, but she cut him dead as an impertinent stranger when he tried

to speak to her. She cut Skip Magruder still deader when he tried to

ride home with her.

He came to call and showed an inclination to settle down as a member of

Kedzie's intimate circle. He had speedily recovered from his first awe

at the sight of her splendor. Finding himself necessary to her, he grew

odiously presumptuous. She had not dared to rebuke him. Now she thought

she would have to buy him off. Skip had had his witness fees and his

expenses, and nothing else for his pains. Then Beattie warned Kedzie

that it would look bad to pay Skip any money; it might cast suspicion on

his testimony. Kedzie would not have done that for worlds. Besides, when

she learned what Mr. Beattie's fee was to be, she felt too poor to pay

anybody anything.

The only thing she could do, therefore, was to remind Skip of the

beautiful old song, “Lovers once, but strangers now.”

“Besides, Skippie dear, I'm engaged.”

“Already?”

“Yes.”

“You woiked that excuse on me when you tried to explain why you toined

me down when I wrote you the letter at the stage door.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Say, Anitar, you'd oughter git some new material. Your act is growin'

familiar.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Oh no! You wasn't never in vawdvul, was you, oh, no! not a tall!”

Kedzie played her pout on him, but Skip glared at her, shook his head,

kicked himself with his game leg, and said, “I gotta give you credit,

Anitar, you're the real thing as a user.”

“A what?” said Kedzie.

“A user,” he explained in his elliptical style. “You're one them dames

uses a fella like he was a napkin, then trows him down. You used me

twice and used me good. I desoived the second one, for I'm the kind o'

guy gets his once and comes back for more in the same place. I'd go

tell Jimmie Dyckman I was a liar but I ain't anxious to be run up for

poijury, and I ain't achin' to advertise what a John I been. So long,

Anitar, and Gaw delp the next guy crosses your pat'.”

That was the last Kedzie saw of Skip. She did not miss him. She hated

him for annoying her pride and she hated the law that she used for

her divorce, because it required her to wait three months before the

interlocutory decree should become final. The time was hazardously long

yet short, in a sense, for her alimony was to end at the end of three

months if she married again, and marrying again was her next ambition.

The judge had fixed her alimony at $30,000 a year, and an allowance for

costs. Beattie tried to make a huge cost settlement, but McNiven knew of

Kedzie's interest in the Marquess and he refused the bait. So Kedzie got

only $7,500. She found it a ruinously small capital to begin life as a

Marchioness on--she that had had only two dollars to begin life in New

York on! The Marquess was very nice about it, and said he didn't want

any of Dyckman's dirty money. But Kedzie thought of life in England

with alarm, especially as she had the American comic-opera idea that all

foreign peers are penniless. She dreaded to think what might happen

in that three months' interregnum between husband II and husband III.

Enough was happening in the rest of the world.

The _annus miserabilis_ 1917 had begun with the determination of the

German Empire to render the seas impassable and to withdraw the pledge

to President Wilson that merchant ships should not be sunk till the

passengers and crew had a chance to get into open boats. On January 31,

1917, “Frightfulness” began anew, and the undersea fleets, enormously

increased, were set loose in shoals. Having no commerce of her own

afloat, it was safe for Germany to sink any vessel anywhere.

Kedzie began to wonder if she would ever dare to sail for he future

ancestral home, and if she did how long her ship would last.

On February 3d the U-53, which had sunk Strathdene's ship off Newport,

sank an American freighter bound from Galveston to Liverpool. Other

American vessels followed her into the depths. On February 27th the

Laconia, of 18,000 tons burden, was torpedoed and twelve passengers died

of exposure in the bitter weather. In one of the open boats a Catholic

priest administered the last rites to seven persons.

Mrs. Hoy, of Chicago, died in the arms of her daughter and her body

slipped into the icy waves, to be followed by her daughter's a few

minutes later.

These seemed to make up a sufficient total of American women drowned,

and on the next day the President declared that the long-awaited “overt

act” had been committed. He asked Congress to declare that peace with

Germany was ended. Her ambassador was sent home and ours called home.

In March the British captured Bagdad and the Germans suddenly retreated

along a sixty-mile front in France; then the Russian revolution abruptly

changed the almighty Czar into a weeping prisoner digging snow. And

the vast burying-ground of Siberia gave up its living dead in a sudden

apocalypse of freedom. Fifty thousand sledges sped across the steppes

laden with returning exiles, chains stil dangling at many a wrist from

the dearth of blacksmiths to strike them off.

Kedzie did not value the privilege of living in times when epochs

of history were crowded into weeks and cycles completed in days. The

revolution in Russia disturbed Kedzie as it did many a monarch, and she

said to her mother:

“What a shame to treat the poor Czar so badly! Strathie and I were

planning to visit Russia after the war, too. The Czar was awfully nice

to Strathie once and I was sure we'd be invited to live right in the

Duma or the Kremlin or whatever they call the palace. And now they've

got a cheap and nasty old republic over there! And they're talking of

having republics everywhere. What could be more stupid? As if everybody

was born free and equal. Mixing all the aristocrats right up with the

common herd!”

Mrs. Thropp agreed that it was simply terrible.

“Do you know what?” Kedzie gasped.

“What?” her mother echoed.

“I've just had a hunch. I'll bet that by the time I get married to

Strathie there'll be nothing left but republics, and no titles at tall.

His people came over with Henry the Conqueror and his title will last

just long enough for me to reach for it, and then--woof! Wouldn't it be

just my luck to become plain Mrs. Strathdene after all I've had to go

through! Honestly, m'mah, don't I just have the dog-on'dest luck!”

“It's perfectly awful,” said Mrs. Thropp, “but bad luck can't go on

forever.”

On April 2d the future Mrs. Strathdene was cheered by an extraordinary

spectacle--newspapers in the Metropolitan Opera House! Kedzie was there

with her waning Marquess. The occasion was rare enough in itself, for

an American opera was being heard: “The Canterbury Pilgrims,” with Mr.

Reginald De Koven's music to Mr. Percy Mackaye's text.

Suddenly, in the _entr'acte_ the unheard-of thing--the

newspapers--appeared in the boxes and about the house! People spread

evening extras on the rails and read excitedly that President Wilson had

gone to Congress and asked it to declare that a state of war existed and

had existed.

The Italian manager directed the Polish conductor to play “The

Star-Spangled Banner” and the three thousand men and women of the

audience made a chorus on the obverse side of the curtain.

Mr. Gerard, lately returned from Germany, called for “Three cheers

for President Wilson,” and there were loud huzzahs for him and for the

Allies.

“You and I are allies now,” Kedzie murmured to the Marquess. She thought

a trifle better of her country.

The Austrian prima donna fainted and could not appear in the last

act, and everybody went home expecting to see the vigor of Uncle Sam

displayed in a swift and tremendous delivery of a blow long, long

withheld.

The vigor was displayed in a tremendous delivery of words far better

withheld.

It was a week before Congress agreed that war existed and over a month

passed before Congress agreed upon the nature of the army to be raised.

Nearly four months passed before the draft was made.

Jim Dyckman was almost glad of the delay, for it gave him hope

of settling his spiritual affairs in time to be a soldier. He was

determined to marry Charity as soon as the three months' probation term

was over. But Charity said no! Cowering in seclusion from the eyes of

her world, she cherished a dream that when the war broke and the dead

began to topple and the wounded to bleed, she might expiate the crime

she had not committed, by devoting to her own people her practised

mercies. She was afraid to offer them now, or even to make her

appearance among the multitudinous associations that sprang up

everywhere in a frantic effort to make America ready in two weeks for

a war that had been inevitable for two years. Not only a war was to be

fought, but a world famine.

Charity was ashamed to show her white face even at the Red Cross. She

busied herself with writing checks for the snow-storm of appeals that

choked her mail. Otherwise she pined in idleness, refusing more than

ever the devotion that Jim offered her now in a longing that increased

with denial.

She suffered infinitely, yet mocked her own sufferings as petty trifles.

She contrasted them with what the millions on millions of Europe's men

were enduring as they huddled in the snow-drenched, grenade-spattered

trenches, or agonized in all their wounds out in the No-Man's Land

between the trenches. She told herself that her own heartaches were

negligible, despicable against the innumerable anguishes of the women

who saw their men, their old men, their young men, their lads, going

into the eternal mills of the war, while hunger and loneliness and toil

unknown to women before made up their daily portion.

She accused herself for still remaining apart from that continental

sisterhood of grief. All America seemed to be playing Hamlet, debating,

deferring, letting irresolution inhibit every necessary duty.

Since her country had disowned her and refused her justice or chivalry,

she was tempted to disown her country and claim citizenship among those

who could fight and could sacrifice and could endure.

It was not easy to persuade a captain to take a woman passenger aboard

his ship, now that the German ambition was to sink a million tons a

month, but she resolved again to go if she had to stowaway.

First she would finish her affairs, make her will, and burn her letters.

She had neglected to change the testament she had signed when she became

Peter Cheever's wife, and took a pride in making him her sole heir. It

would be ridiculous to make him such a post-mortem gift now, now that he

had not only money enough, but a wife that satisfied him, and a child.

She wondered whom to leave her money to. Jim Dyckman's name kept

recurring to her and she smiled at that, for he had more money than he

could use. Besides, the mention of his name in her will would confirm

the public belief in their intrigue. She had nobody to inflict her

inheritance upon but a few relatives, mostly rich enough. She decided to

establish a fund for her own orphans, the children of other women whom

she had adopted.

Making a will is in sort a preliminary death. Making hers, Charity felt

herself already gone, and looked back at life with a finality as from

beyond the grave. It was a frightful thing to review her journey from a

lofty angel's-eye view.

Her existence looked very petty. Now that her hope and her senses were

ended, she felt a grudge against the world that she had got so little

out of. She had tried to be a good woman, and her altruism had won her

such a bad name that if Dr. Mosely should preach her funeral sermon he

would feel that he had revealed a wonderful spirit of forbearance in

leaving it unmentioned that she was an abandoned divorcee.

If she had been actually guilty of an intrigue with Jim Dyckman Dr.

Mosely would have forgiven her even more warmly, because it was a woman

taken in actual adultery who was forgiven, while Charity had tactlessly

fought the charge and demanded vindication instead of winsomely

appealing for pity.

By a roundabout road of self-surrender she had come to the same

destination that she might have reached by the straight path of

self-indulgence. She was perilously near to resolving that she had been

a fool not to have taken happiness, physical happiness, first. A grand

red passion seemed so much more beautiful than a petty blue asceticism.

When she got home from the will-making session with McNiven she began

to go over her papers and close the books of her years. She attacked old

heaps of bundles of her husband's letters and telegrams, and burned them

with difficulty in her fireplace.

She felt no temptation to glance over them, though her lip curled in a

grimace of sardonic disgust to consider how much Peter Cheever had been

to her and how little he was to her now. The first parcels she burned

were addressed to “Miss Charity Coe.” How far off it seemed since she

had been called “Miss”!

She had been a girl when Cheever's written and spoken words inflamed

her. They blazed now as she had blazed. Into that holocaust had gone her

youth, her illusions, her virginity, her bridehood, her wifely trust.

And all that was left was a black char.

She came upon letters from Jim Dyckman, also, a few. She flung them into

the fire with the rest. He had had nothing from her except friendship

and girlish romance and a grass-widow's belated affection. Crimson

thoughts stole through her dark heart like the lithe blazes interlacing

the letters; she wondered if she would have done better to have followed

desire and taken love instead of solitude.

She knew that she could have made Jim hers long ago with a little less

severity, a less harsh rebuff. The Church condemned her for openly

divorcing her husband. She might have kept him on the leash and carried

on the affair with Jim that Cheever accused her of if Jim had been

complacent and stealthy. Or, she might have kept Jim at her heels till

she was rid of Cheever and then have married him. She would have

saved him at least from floundering through the marsh where that

Kedzie-o'-the-wisp had led him to ultimate disaster.

And now that she had taken stock of her past and put it into the fire,

she felt strangely exiled. She had no past, no present, and a future all

hazy. Her loneliness was complete. She had to talk to some one, and she

telephoned to Jim Dyckman, making her good-bys an excuse.

It was the first time he had been permitted to hear her voice for weeks,

and the lonely joy that cried out in his greeting brought warm tears to

her dull, dry eyes.

He heard her weeping and he demanded the right to come to see her. She

refused him and cut off his plea, hoping that he would come, anyway, and

waiting tremulously till the door-bell rang with a forgotten thrill of a

caller, a lover calling.

Her maid, who brought her Jim's name, begged with her eyes that he

should not be turned away again. Charity nodded and prinked a little and

went down-stairs into Jim's arms.

He took her there as if she belonged there and she felt that she did,

though she protested, feebly:

“You are not unmarried yet.”

They were in that No-Man's-Land. She was neither maid, wife, nor widow,

but divorcee. He was neither bachelor, husband, nor widower; he was not

even a divorce. He was a _Nisi Prius_.

CHAPTER XV

The childish old fates played one of their cheapest jokes on Jim Dyckman

when, after they had dangled Charity Coe just out of his reach for a

lifetime, they flung her at his head. They do those things. They waken

the Juliets just a moment too late to save the Romeos and themselves.

Jim had revered Charity as far too good for him, and now everybody

wondered if he would do the right thing by her. Prissy Atterbury in a

burst of chivalry said it when he said:

“Jim's no gentleman if he doesn't marry Charity.”

Pet put it in a more womanly way:

“Unless he's mighty spry she'll nab him. Trust her!”

Among the few people who had caught a glimpse of Charity, no one had

been quite cruel enough to say those things to her face, but Charity

imagined them. Housed with her sick and terrified imagination for

companion, she had imagined nearly everything dismal.

And now, when, by the mere laws of gravitation, she had floated into Jim

Dyckman's arms for a moment, she heard the popular doom of them both in

the joke he attempted:

“Charity, I've got to marry you to make you an honest woman.”

She wrenched free of his embrace with a violence that staggered him.

He saw that she was taking his effort at playfulness seriously, even

tragically.

“No, no, Jim!” she gasped. “I've brought you enough trouble and enough

disgrace. I won't let you ruin your life by marrying me out of pity.”

“Pity! Good God!” Jim groaned. “Why, you don't think I meant that, do

you? I was just trying to be funny, because I was so happy. I'll promise

never to try to be funny again. It was like saying to Venus, 'You're a

homely old thing, but I'll let you cook for me'; or saying to--whoever

it was was the Goddess of Wisdom, 'You don't know much, but'--Why,

Charity Coe, you're Venus and Minerva and all the goddesses rolled into

one.”

Charity shook her head.

He roared: “If it's pity you're talking about, isn't it about time you

had a little for me? Life won't be worth a single continental damn to me

if I don't get you.”

Charity had needed something of this sort for a long time. It sounded to

her like a serenade by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Her acknowledgment

was a tearful, smileful giggle-sob:

“Honestly?”

“Honest-to-God-ly!”

“All right, as soon as you're a free man fetch the parson, for I'm

pretty tired of being a free woman.”

Jim had learned from McNiven that a part of his freedom, when he got it,

would be a judicial denial of the right to surrender it for five years.

He had learned that if he wanted to marry Charity he must persuade

her over into New Jersey. It did not please Jim to have to follow the

example of Zada and Cheever, and it hit him as a peculiar cruelty that

he and Charity had to accept not only an unearned increment of scandal

in the verdict of divorce, but also a marriage contrary to the laws of

New York.

New York would respect the ceremonies of New Jersey, but there would

be a shadow on the title. Still, such marriages were recognized by the

public with little question, just as in the countries where divorce is

almost or quite impossible society of all grades has always countenanced

unions not too lightly entered into or continued. In such countries

words like “mistress,” “concubine,” and “morganatic wife” take on a

decided respectability with a touch of pathos rather than reproach.

Jim had come to beg Charity to accept a marriage with an impediment. He

had expected a scene when he proposed a flight across the river and a

return to Father Knickerbocker with a request for pardon. But her light

suggestion of a religious ceremony threw him into confusion. He mumbled:

“Is a parson absolutely necessary?”

Charity's lips set into a grim line.

“I'll be married by a parson or I'll not be married at all. The Church

has enough against me on account of my divorce and this last ghastly

thing. To get married outside the Church would cut me off entirely from

everything that's sacred. There won't be any difficulty about getting a

parson, will there?”

“Oh no, not at all!” Jim protested, “only--oh no, not at all, except--”

“Only what? Except what?”

“You'll have to go to New Jersey to be married.”

“Why should I?”

“Entirely on my account, honey. It's because I'm in disgrace.”

This way of putting it brought her over that sill with a rush. To be

able to endure something for him was a precious ability. She hugged him

devoutly, then put his arms away.

When he left her he had a brilliant inspiration. He thought how soothing

it would be to her bruised heart, what carron-oil to her blistered

reputation, if he got Doctor Mosely to perform the ceremony. Jim was

so delighted with the stroke of genius that he went immediately to the

pastor's house. The dear old man greeted him with a subdued warmth.

“This is an unusual privilege, dear boy. I haven't seen you for--oh,

ever so long. Of course, I have read of you--er--that is--what--to what

am I indebted for--”

“You perform marriages, don't you?”

“That is one of my perilous prerogatives. But, of course, I can't

guarantee how well my marriages will wear in these restless times.”

Jim braved a flippancy: “Then, being an honest dealer, you replace any

damaged article, of course?”

“I am afraid I could hardly go so far as that.”

“Could you go as far as New Jersey?”

“In my time I have ventured into Macedonia. But why do you ask?”

“You see, in a day or two, I'll be free from my present--that is, my

absent wife; and I wanted to know if you could come over and marry me.”

“But I thought--I fear--do you mean to say you are marrying some young

woman from over there?”

“I'm marrying Charity Coe.”

“My dear, dear boy! Really! You can't, you know! She has been divorced

and so have you.”

“Yes, all quite legally.”

“And you ask me to join your hands in holy matrimony?”

“No, just plain legal matrimony. I was joined in holy matrimony once,

and I don't insist on that part of it again. But Charity wants a

clergyman and I don't mind.”

“Really, my son, you know better than to assume this tone to me. You've

been away from church too long.”

“Well, if you want to get me back, fasten me to Charity. You know she's

the best woman that ever lived.”

“She is a trifle too rebellious to merit that tribute, I fear.”

“Well, give her another chance. She has had enough hard knocks. You

ought to go to her rescue.”

“Do you think that to be the duty of the Church?”

“It used to be, didn't it? But don't get me into theology. I can't swim.

The point is, will you marry Charity to me?”

“No!”

“Wouldn't you marry her to any man?”

“Only to one.”

“Who's that?”

“Her former husband.”

“But he's married to another woman.”

“I do not recognize that marriage.”

“Good Lord! Would you like to see Charity married to Cheever again?”

“Yes.”

“To Peter Cheever?”

“Yes.”

“Whew! Say, Doctor, that's going it pretty strong.”

“I do not care to discuss the sacraments with you in your present

humor.”

“Did you read the trial of that woman last week who killed her husband

and was acquitted? Mrs. What's-her-name? You must have read it.”

“I pay little attention to the newspaper scandals.”

“You ought to--they're what make life what it is. Anyway, this woman had

a husband who turned out bad. He was a grafter and a gambler, a drunkard

and a brute. He beat her and their five children horribly, and finally

she divorced him. The law gave her her freedom in five minutes and there

was no fuss about it, because she was poor, and the newspapers have

no room for poor folks' marriage troubles--unless they up and kill

somebody.

“Well, this woman was getting along all right when some good religious

people got at her about the sin of her divorce and the broken sacrament,

and they kept at her till finally she consented to remarry her

husband--for the children's sake! There was great rejoicing by

everybody--except the poor woman. After the remarriage he returned to

his old ways and began to beat her again, and finally she emptied a

revolver into him.”

“Horrible, horrible!”

“Wasn't it? The jury disagreed on the first trial. But on the second

the churchpeople who persuaded her to remarry him went on the stand and

confessed--or perhaps you would say, boasted--that they persuaded her

to remarry him. And then she was acquitted. And that's why the civil law

has always had to protect people from--”

Doctor Mosely turned purple at the implication and the insolence. He

scolded Jim loftily, but Jim did not cower. He was upheld by his own

religion, which was Charity Coe's right to vindication and happiness.

At length he realized that he was harming Charity and not Doctor Mosely.

Suddenly he was apologizing humbly:

“I'm very much ashamed of myself. You're an older man and venerable, and

I--I oughtn't to have forgotten that.”

“You ought not.”

“I'll do any penance you say, if you'll only marry Charity and me.”

“Don't speak of that again.”

He thought of his old friend and attorney, money. He put that forward.

“I'll pay anything.”

“Mr. Dyckman!”

“I'll give the church a solid gold reredos or contribute any sum to any

alms--”

“Please go. I cannot tolerate any more.”

Jim left the old man in such agitation that a reporter named Hallard,

who shadowed him, feeling in his journalistic bones that a big story

would break about him soon, noted his condition and called on Doctor

Mosely. He was still shaken with the storm of defending his ideals from

profanation, and Hallard easily drew from him an admission that Mr.

Dyckman was bent upon matrimony, also a scathing diatribe on the

remarriage of divorced persons as one of the signs of the increasing

degeneracy of public morals.

* * * * *

Hallard's paper carried a lovely exclusive story the next morning in

noisy head-lines. The other newspapers enviously plagiarized it and set

their news-sleuths on Jim's trail. The clergy of all denominations took

up the matter as a theme of vital timeliness.

Jim and Charity were beautifully suited to the purposes of both

sorts; the newspapers that pulpiteered the news and wrote highly

moral editorials for sensation's sake; and the pulpiteers who shouted

head-lines and yellow journalism from their rostrums, more for the

purpose of self-advertisement than for any devotion to Christly

principles of sympathy and gentle comprehension.

Jim was stupefied to find himself once more pilloried and portraited and

ballyhooed in the newspapers. But he tightened his jaws and refused to

be howled from his path by any coyote pursuit.

His next thought was of the New Jersey clergyman who had married him to

Kedzie. He motored over to him.

Jim had told Dr. Mosely that clergymen ought to keep up with the news.

He found, to his regret, that the New Jersey dominie did.

He remembered Jim well and heard him out, but shook his head. He

explained why, patiently. He had been greatly impressed by the action of

the House of Deputies of the Protestant Episcopal Church convened at St.

Louis in October, 1916. A new canon had been proposed declaring that “no

marriage shall be solemnized in this Church between parties, either of

whom has a husband or wife still living, who has been divorced for any

cause arising after marriage.”

This meant that the innocent party, as well as the guilty, should be

denied another chance. The canon had been hotly debated--so hotly that

one preacher referred to any wedding of divorced persons as “filth

marriage,” and others were heard insisting that even Christ's acceptance

of adultery as a cause for divorce was an interpolation in the text, and

that the whole passage concerning the woman taken in adultery was absent

from some ancient manuscripts. A halt was called to this dangerous

line of argument, and one clergyman protested that “the question of

the integrity of the Scriptures is more important than the question

of marriage and divorce.” Another clergyman pleaded: “An indissoluble

marriage is a fiction. What is the use of tying the Church up to a

fiction? It is our business to teach and not to legislate.” Eventually

the canon was defeated. But many of the clergy were determined to follow

it, anyway.

In any case, not only was Charity divorced, but she had been involved in

Jim's divorce, and Jim, as the New Jersey preacher pointed out to him,

was denied remarriage even by the civil law of New York. The appeal to

New Jersey was plainly a subterfuge, and he begged Jim to give Charity

up.

“You don't know what you ask,” Jim cried. “I'll find somebody with a

heart!” And he stormed out.

CHAPTER XVI

Jim reported to Charity his two defeats and the language he had heard

and read. Charity's conscience was so clean that her reaction was one of

wrath. She pondered her future and Jim's. She could not see what either

of them had done so vile that they should be sentenced to celibacy

for life, or more probably to an eventual inevitable horror of outward

conformity and secret intrigue.

She knew too many people whose wedlock had been a lifelong tolerance

of infamy on the part of one or both. Some of the bitterest enemies of

divorce were persons who had found it quite unnecessary. She felt that

to forgive and to forget became so anti-social a habit in matrimony that

no divorce could be worse.

She was afraid of herself, too. She dared not trust herself with life

alone. She was too human to be safe. Marriage with Jim would protect

him and her from each other and from the numberless temptations awaiting

them. Finally, there were no children in the matter.

All arguments prove too much and too little, and in the end become

simply our own briefs for our own inclinations. Charity's mood being

what it was, she adopted the line of reasoning that led to her own

ambition. She spent much time on her knees, but communed chiefly with

herself, and rose always confirmed in her belief that to marry Jim

Dyckman was the next great business of her existence.

Jim, too, had grown unwontedly earnest. The marriage denounced by the

religious had taken on a religious quality. He was inclined to battle

for it as for a creed, as the clergymen had battled vainly for the new

canon.

He, too, felt a spirit of genuflexion and wanted to speak to God

personally; to appeal to Him by a private petition as to a king whose

ministers denied mercy.

By his bed he sank down and prayed. He was very solemn, but too

uncertain of the solemn voice to use it. He half whispered, half

thought:

“O God, I don't know how you want me to act. I only know that my heart

keeps on calling for Charity and a home with her, and children some day.

There'll never be any children for either of us if we obey the Church.

Forgive me if I doubt what these preachers tell me, but I just can't

believe it to be your voice. If it is not your voice, what is it that

makes me feel it such a sin not to marry Charity? I'm going to, God,

unless you stop me. I may be making a big mistake, but if I am you'll

understand. You will not be mad at me any more than I am mad at my dog

when he misunderstands me, for I know he is a good dog and wants to do

what I want him to if he can only learn what it is. If it is not

your will that I should marry Charity tell me now so that I can't

misunderstand, for if you don't I'm going ahead. If I have to take the

punishment afterward, I'll take it rather than leave that poor soul

alone. Bless her, O God, and help me. Amen.”

And now both Charity and Jim were ready for battle. She set her hand in

Jim's and said that she would marry him in spite of all, but that she

would not give up her hope of being married by one of her own faith

until she had canvassed the entire clergy.

And then began one of the strangest quests ever undertaken, even in this

transitional period of matrimony as an institution--a quest so strange

that it would seem impossible if it had not actually happened. Jim and

Charity hunted a preacher and the press hunted them.

While the journalists waited for the United States to enter the war with

soldiers, the reporters kept in practice by scouting after Jim Dyckman

and sniping him whenever he showed his head. He succeeded only in

getting his resignation from his regiment accepted. He planned to sail

for France and fight for France as soon as he had married Charity.

When he failed to secure a minister by letter or telegram he set forth

to make personal visits. Sometimes Charity went with him so that there

should be no delay or time for a change of mood.

From city to town they went, from village to city, searching for an

Episcopalian clergyman to say the desired words. Jim offered any bribery

that might suffice, but ahead of him went his notoriety.

Many a warm-hearted clergyman felt sympathy for Jim and Charity and

longed to end their curious pilgrimage, but dared not brave the wrath

of his fellow-preachers or accept the unwelcome fame that awaited his

blessing, and the discipline that would be meted out to him.

Jim's picture was so widely published that when he eluded one crowd

another posse sprang up wherever he reappeared. His entrance into a town

was a signal for the clergy to scurry to cover. Some of them, to put

themselves on record and insure themselves against temptation, denounced

Jim and his attachee as traveling fiends, emissaries of the devil.

The wealth that was their drag was proclaimed as their weapon.

The storm grew fiercer and the language more unrestrained. Jim and

Charity, reading in the papers the terms applied to them, cowered and

shuddered.

Charity grew haggard and peevish. Her obstinacy was hardly more than a

lockjaw of fright, the stubbornness of a drowning child afraid to let

go.

Jim was almost equally sick. The newspaper pursuit covered him with

chagrin. His good old name was precious to him, and he knew how his

mother and father were suffering at its abuse, as well as for him in his

fugitive distress.

Jim's mother was very much mother. She took into her breast every arrow

shot at him. When she saw him she held him fiercely in her arms, her

big frame aching with a Valkyrian ardor to lift the brave warrior on a

winged horse and carry him away from the earth.

It is hard for the best of mothers to love even the best of

daughters-in-law, for how can two fires prosper on the same fuel? It had

been a little too hard for Mrs. Dyckman to love Kedzie. It was all too

easy to hate her now and to denounce her till even Jim winced.

“Don't think of her, mother,” he pleaded. “Don't let's speak of her any

more. She's only one of my past mistakes. You never mention those--why

not let her drop?”

“All right, honey. You must forgive me. I'm only a sour old woman and it

breaks my heart to think of that little, common--”

“There you go again,” her husband growled, sick with grief, too. “Let

the little cat go.”

“What's killing me,” Jim said, “is thinking of what I've brought on

Charity. It makes me want to die.”

“But you'll have to live for her sake--and your mother's,” said his

mother. “Charity's the only woman I know that's worth fighting for.

I've known her since she was born and I never knew her to do or say one

single petty thing. She hasn't got one of those qualities that women

hate so much in women.”

“Then why should she have to suffer such persecution?” Jim cried. “My

God! is chivalry dead in the world?”

His father flung his arm around him and hugged him roughly. “Not while

there's a man like you to fight for a woman like her. I never was so

proud of anything as I am of being the father of a big fellow like you,

who can make a battle like yours for love of a woman.”

“But why should I have to fight for her? Whose business is it but ours

that we want to get married decently and live together quietly? Isn't

this a free country?”

“Only the press is free,” said his father. “And poor Charity is getting

nothing more than women have always got who've dared to ask for their

own way. They used to throw 'em to the lions, or bowstring 'em in the

harems. And in the days of real chivalry they burned 'em at the stake or

locked 'em up in convents or castles. But don't you worry, Jim, Charity

has you for a champion and she's mighty lucky. Go on and fight the

muckers and the muck-rakers, and don't let the reporters or the

preachers scare you away from doing the one right thing.”

The newspapers kept within the almost boundless limits of the libel law.

Jim had publicity enough, and he did not care to add to it by a libel

suit, nor could he bring himself to make a personal attack on any of his

pursuers. His discretion took on the look of poltroonery and he groveled

in shame.

One bitter day he motored with Charity to a village where a clergyman

lived who had wearied of the persecution and volunteered his offices.

When they arrived his wife told Jim that he was stricken ill. He had

fretted himself into his bed.

Jim bundled Charity into his car and set forth again in a storm. The car

skidded and turned turtle in a ditch. By some chance neither of them was

more than bruised and muddied. The hamper of food was spilled and broken

and they had hours to wait by the roadside while a wrecking crew came

from the nearest city to right the car.

While they waited, forlorn and shivering, like two tramps rather than

like two malefactors of great wealth, their hunger drove them to banquet

on their little store.

Jim, gnawing at a crust of suspicious cleanliness, studied Charity where

she huddled in the shelter of a dripping tree, like a queen driven forth

into exile. And the tears poured from his eyes and salted the bread.

He had eaten the food of his own tears. He had tasted life and found it

bitter.

When the men came with the ropes and the tackle necessary and slowly

righted the car he found that its engine ran again and he had speed and

strength once more as his servants. He tried to encourage Charity with a

figure of speech.

“They've got us ditched, honey, for a while, but we'll get righted soon

and then life will be as smooth as smooth.”

She tried to smile for his sake, but she had finished with hope.

CHAPTER XVII

While Jim and Charity sat by the roadside the Marchioness of Strathdene,

_nee_ Kedzie Thropp, of Nimrim, sat on a fine cushion and salted with

her tears the toasted English crumpet she was having with her tea.

She had been married indeed, but the same ban that fell upon Jim's

remarriage had forbidden her the wedding of her dreams. She was the

innocent party to the divorce and she was married in a church. But it

was not of the Episcopal creed, which she was now calling the Church

of England. Kedzie-like, she still wanted what she could not get and

grieved over what she got. It is usual to berate people of her sort,

but they are no more to be blamed than other dyspeptics. Souls, like

stomachs, cannot always coordinate appetite and digestion.

Kedzie had, however, found a husband who would be permanently precious

to her, since she would never be certain of him. Like her, he was

restless, volatile, and maintained his equilibrium as a bicycle does

only by keeping on going. He was mad to be off to the clouds of France.

There was a delay because ships were sailing infrequently, and their

departure was kept secret. Passengers had to go aboard and wait.

Bidding “bon voyage” was no longer the stupid dock-party platitude it

had been. It was bidding “good-by” with faint hope of _“au revoir.”_

Ladies going abroad, even brides, thought little of their deck costumes

so long as they included a well-tailored life-preserver.

Mrs. Thropp stared at Kedzie and breathed hard in her creaking satin.

And Adna looked out at her over the high collar that took a nip at his

Adam's apple every time he swallowed it.

The old parents were sad with an unwonted sorrow. They had money at last

and they had even been hauled up close to the aristocracy as the tail

to Kite Kedzie. But now they had time to realize that they were to lose

this pretty thing they had somehow been responsible for yet unable to

control. They had nearly everything else, so their child was to be taken

from them.

Suddenly they loved her with a grave-side ache. She was their baby,

their little girl, their youth, their beauty, their romance, their

daughter. And perhaps in a few days she would be shattered and dead in

a torpedoed ship. Perhaps in some high-flung lifeboat she would be

crouching all drenched and stuttering with cold and dying with terror.

Mrs. Thropp broke into big sobs that jolted her sides and she fell over

against Adna, who did not know how to comfort her. He held her in arms

like a bear's and patted her with heavy paws, but she felt on her head

the drip-drip of his tears. And thus Kedzie by her departure brought

them together in a remarriage, a poor sort of honeymoon wherein they had

little but the bitter-sweet privilege of helping each other suffer.

The picture of their welded misery brought Kedzie a return, too, to her

child hunger for parentage. She wanted a mother and a father and she

could not have them. She went to put her exquisite arms about them and

the three so dissimilar heads were grotesquely united.

The Marquess of Strathdene pretended to be disgusted and stormed

out. But that was because he did not want to be seen making an ass of

himself, weeping as Bottom the Weaver wept. He flung away his salted and

extinguished cigarette and wondered what was the matter with the world

where nothing ever came out right.

His own mother was weeping all the time and her letters told always of

new losses. The newspapers kept printing stories of Strathdene's chums

being put away in a trench or a hospital, or falling from the clouds

dead.

And starvation was coming everywhere; in England there was talk of

famine, and all America had gone mad with fear of it. But still the war

went on in a universal suicide which nobody could stop, and peace, the

one thing that everybody wanted, was wanted by nobody on any terms that

anybody else would even discuss.

As he agonized with his philosophy and lighted another cigarette, the

street roared like hurricane. Below the windows the French Mission was

proceeding up Fifth Avenue. Marechal Joseph Joffre and Rene Viviani were

awakening tumult in the American heart and stirring it to the rescue of

France and of England and of Belgium and Italy, with what outcome none

could know. One could only know that at last the great flood of war had

encircled the United States, reducing it to the old primeval problems

and emotions: how to get enough to eat, how to get weapons, how to

find and beat down the enemy, how to endure the farewells of fathers,

mothers, sons, sisters, sweethearts, wives. Everything was complex

beyond understanding for minds, but things were very simple for hearts;

they had only to ache with sorrow or wrath.

The Marchioness of Strathdene and her airy husband reached England

without being submarined, and there, to her great surprise, Kedzie

found a whole new universe of things not quite right. “If only it were

otherwise!” was still the perpetual alibi of contentment.

CHAPTER XVIII

From the glory of the festivals of alliance Jim Dyckman and Charity Coe

were absent. Both were so eager to be abroad in the battle that they did

not miss the flag-waving. But they wanted to cross the sea together. The

importance of this ambition tempted Charity to a desperate conclusion

that the formalities of her union with Jim did not matter so long as

they were together. Yet the risk of death was so inescapable and she was

so imbued with churchliness that her dreams were filled with visions

of herself dead and buried in unhallowed ground, of herself and Jim

standing at heaven's gate and turned away for lack of a blessing on

their union.

Her soul was about ready to break completely, but her body gave out

first. It was in a small town in New Jersey that they found themselves

weather-bound.

The sky seemed to rain ice-water and they took refuge in the village's

one hotel, a dismal place near the freight-station. The entrance was up

a narrow staircase, past a bar-room door.

The rooms were ill furnished and ill kept, and the noise of screaming

locomotives and jangling freight-cars was incessant. But there was no

other hospitality to be had in the town.

Jim left Charity at her door and begged her to sleep. Her dull eyes and

doddering head promised for her.

He went to his own room and laughed at the cheap wretchedness of it:

the cracked pitcher in the cracked bowl, the washstand whose lower door

would not stay open, the two yellow towels in the rack, the bureau,

the cane chairs, and the iron bed with its thin mattress and neglected

drapery.

He lowered himself into a rickety rocker and looked out through the

dirtier window at the dirty town. The only place to go was to sleep, and

he tried to make the journey. But a ferocious resentment at the idiocy

of things drove away repose.

He resolved that he had been a fool long enough. He would give up the

vain effort to conform, and would take Charity without sanction. He was

impatient to go to her then and there, but he dared not approach her

till she had rested.

He remembered a book he had picked up at one of their villages of

denial. It was one of those numberless books everybody is supposed to

have read. For that reason he had found it almost impossible to begin.

But he was desperate enough to read even a classic. He hoped that it

would be a soporific. That was his definition of a classic.

The book was the Reverend Charles Kingsley's _Hypatia._ Jim was down on

the Episcopal clergy one and all, and he read with prejudice, skipping

the preface, of course, which set forth the unusual impulse of a

churchman to help the Church of his own day by pointing out the crimes

and errors of the Church of an earlier day; a too, too rare appeal to

truth for the sake of salvation by the way of truth.

As Jim glanced angrily through the early pages, the pictures of life in

the fifth century caught and quickened his gritty eyes. He skimmed the

passages that did not hold him, but as the hours went on he grew more

unable to let go.

The sacred lunch hour passed by ignored. The rain beat down on the roof

as the words rained up from the page. The character of that eminently

wise and beautiful and good Hypatia seemed to be Charity in ancient

costume. The hostility of the grimy churchmen of that day infuriated

him. He cursed and growled as he read.

The persecution of Hypatia wrought him to such wrath that he wanted to

turn back the centuries and go to her defense. He breathed hard as he

came to the last of the book and read of the lynching of Hypatia, the

attack of the Christians upon her chariot, the dragging of her exquisite

body through the streets, and even into the church, and up to the altar,

up to the foot of “the colossal Christ watching unmoved from off the

wall, his right hand raised to give a blessing--or a curse?”

Jim panted as Philammon did, tracing her through the streets by the

fragments of her torn robes and fighting through the mob in vain to

reach her and shield her. He became Philammon and saw not words on a

page, but a tragedy that lived again.

She shook herself free from her tormentors, and, springing back, rose

for one moment to her full height, naked, snow-white against the dusky

mass around--shame and indignation in those wide clear eyes, but not a

stain of fear. With one hand she clasped her golden locks around her;

the other long white arm was stretched upward toward the great still

Christ, appealing--and who dare say, in vain?--from man to God.

Her lips were opened to speak; but the words that should have come from

them reached God's ear alone; for in an instant Peter struck her down,

the dark mass closed over her again ... and then wail on wail, long,

wild, ear-piercing, rang along the vaulted roofs and thrilled like the

trumpet of avenging angels through Philammon's ears.

Crushed against a pillar, unable to move in the dense mass, he pressed

his hands over his ears. He could not shut out those shrieks! When would

they end? What in the name of the God of mercy were they doing? Tearing

her piecemeal? Yes, and worse than that. And still the shrieks rang

on, and still the great Christ looked down on Philammon with that calm,

intolerable eye, and would not turn away. And over His head was written

in the rainbow, “I am the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever!” The

same as He was in Judea of old, Philammon? Then what are these, and in

whose temple? And he covered his face with his hands, and longed to die.

It was over. The shrieks had died away into moans; the moans to silence.

How long had he been there? An hour, or an eternity? Thank God it was

over! For her sake--but for theirs?

Startled by the vividness of the murder, Jim looked up from the

book, thinking that he had heard indeed the shrieks of Charity in a

death-agony. The walls seemed to quiver still with their reverberation.

He put down the book in terror and saw where he was. It was like waking

from a nightmare. He was glad to find that he was not in a temple of

ancient Alexandria, but in even that dingy New Jersey inn.

He wondered if Charity had not died. He hesitated to go to her door and

knock. She needed sleep so much that he hardly dared to risk waking her,

even to assure himself that she was alive.

He went to the window and saw two men under umbrellas talking in the

yard between the hotel wings. They would not have been laughing as they

were if they had heard shrieks.

His eye was caught by a window opposite his. There sat Charity in a

heavy bath-robe; her hair was down; she had evidently dropped into the

chair by the open window and fallen asleep.

Jim stared at her and was reminded of how he had stared at Kedzie on his

other wedding journey. Only, Kedzie had been his bride, and Charity was

not yet, and might never be. Kedzie was girlish against an auroral sky;

she was rather illumined than dressed in silk. Charity was a heart-sick

woman, driven and fagged, and swaddled now in a heavy woolen blanket

of great bunches and wrinkles. Kedzie was new and pink and fresh as

any dew-dotted morning-glory that ever sounded its little bugle-note of

fragrance. Charity was an old sweetheart, worn, drooping, wilted as a

broken rose left to parch with thirst.

Yet it was Charity that made his heart race with love and desire and

determination. She was Hypatia to him and he vowed that the churchmen

should not deny her nor destroy her. He clenched his fists with

resolution, then went back to his book and finished it. He loved it so

well that he forgave the Church and the clergy somewhat for the sake

of this clergyman who had spoken so sturdily for truth and beauty and

mercy. He loved the book so well that he even read the preface and

learned that Hypatia really lived once and was virtuous, though pagan,

and was stripped and slain at the Christian altar, chopped and mutilated

with oyster shells in a literal ostracism, her bones burned and her

ashes flung into the sea.

The lesson Kingsley drew from her fate was that the Church was fatally

wrong to sanction “those habits of doing evil that good may come, of

pious intrigue, and at last of open persecution, which are certain to

creep in wheresoever men attempt to set up a merely religious

empire, independent of human relationships and civil laws.” The

preacher-novelist warned the Church of now that the same old sins of

then were still at work.

Jim closed the book and returned to the window to study Charity. He

vowed that he would protect her from that ostracism. His wealth was but

a broken sword, but it should save her.

He felt it childish of her to be so set upon a wedding at the hands of

one of the clergymen who stoned her, but he liked her better for finding

something childish and stubborn in her. She was so good, so wise, so

noble, so all-for-others, that she needed a bit of obstinate foolishness

to keep her from being absolute marble.

He put on his hat and his raincoat and went out into the town, hunting a

clergyman, resolved to compel him at all costs. The sudden shower

became lyrical to his mood as a railroad train clicks to the mood of the

passenger.

There was but one Episcopal church in the village and the parsonage was

a doleful little cottage against a shabby temple. The hotelkeeper had

told him how to find it, and the name of the parson.

Jim tapped piously on the door, then knocked, then pounded. At length a

voice came to him from somewhere, calling:

“Come into the church!”

“That's what I've been trying to do for weeks,” Jim growled. He went

into the church and found the parson in his shirt-sleeves. He had been

setting dishpans and wash-tubs and pails under the various jets of water

that came in through the patched roof in unwelcome libations.

His sleeves were rolled up and he was rolling up pew cushions. He gave

Jim a wet hand and peered at him curiously. It relieved Jim not to be

recognized and regarded as a visiting demon.

The clergyman's high black waistcoat was frayed and shiny, as well

as wet, and his reverted collar had an evident edge from the way the

preacher kept moistening his finger and running it along the rim. In

spite of this worse than a hair-shirt martyrdom, the parson seemed to be

a mild and pitiful soul, and Jim felt hopeful of him as he began:

“I must apologize, Mr. Rutledge, for intruding on you, but I--well, I've

got more money than I need and I imagine you've got less. I want to give

you a little of mine for your own use. Is there any place you could put

ten thousand dollars where it would do some good?”

Young Mr. Rutledge felt for a moment that he was dreaming or delirious.

He made Jim repeat his speech; then he stammered:

“Oh, my dear sir! The wants of this parish! and my poor chapel! You can

see the state of the roof, and the broken windows. The people are too

poor to pay for repairs. My own pittance is far in arrears, but I can't

complain of that since so many of my dear flock are in need. I was just

about persuaded that we should have to abandon the fight to keep the

church alive. I had not counted on miracles, but it seems that they do

occur.”

“Well, I'm not exactly a miracle-worker, but I've got some money you

can have if--there's a string to it, of course. But you could use ten

thousand dollars, couldn't you?”

“Indeed not,” said Mr. Rutledge, feeling as Faust must have felt when

Mephisto began to promise things. A spurt of water from a new leak

brought him back from the Middle Ages and he cried: “You might lend a

hand with this tub, sir, if you will.”

When the new cascade was provided for, Jim renewed his bids for the

preacher's soul:

“If you can't use ten thousand, how much could you use?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, you could use a new roof at least. I'll give you a new roof, and

a real stained-glass window of Charity to replace that broken imitation

atrocity, and a new organ and hymn-books, and new pew covers, and I'll

pay your arrears of salary and guarantee your future, and I'll give you

an unlimited drawing account for your poor, and--any other little things

you may think of.”

Mr. Rutledge protested:

“It's rather cruel of you, sir, to make such jokes at such a time.”

“God bless you, old man! I never was so much in earnest. It's easy for

me to do those little trifles.”

“Then you must be an angel straight from heaven.”

“I'm an angel, they tell me, but from the opposite direction. It's plain

you don't know who I am. Sit down and I'll tell you the story of my

life.”

So the little clergyman in his shirt-sleeves sat shivering with

incipient pneumonia and beatitude, and by his side in the damp pew in

the dark chapel Jim sat in his raincoat and unloaded his message.

The Reverend Mr. Rutledge had heard of Jim and of Charity, and had

regretted the assault of their moneyed determination on the bulwarks of

his faith. But somehow as he heard Jim talk he found him simple, honest,

forlorn, despised and rejected, and in desperate necessity.

He looked at his miserable church and thought of his flock. Jim's money

would put shingles on the rafters and music in the hymns and food in the

hungry. It became a largess from heaven.

He could see nothing, hear nothing, but a call to accept. He asked for a

moment to consider. He retired to pray.

His prayer was interrupted by one of his hungriest parishioners, a Mrs.

McGillicuddy, one of those poor old washerwomen whose woes pile up

till they are almost laughable to a less humorous heart than the little

preacher's. He asked her to wait and returned to his prayers.

His sheep seemed to gather about their shepherd and bleat for pasture

and shelter. They answered his prayer for him. He came back and said:

“I will.”

* * * * *

“I do,” was what Jim and Charity said a little later when Jim had

wrested Charity from her sleep by pounding at her door. He waited,

frantically, while she dressed. And he had the town's one hack at the

door below. He was afraid that the parson would change his mind before

they could get the all-important words out of him.

They rode through the rain like Heine's couple in the old stage-coach,

with Cupid, the blind passenger, between them. They ran into the church

under the last bucketfuls of shower. Jim produced the license he had

carried so long in vain. The washerwoman consented to be one witness;

the sexton-janitor made the other.

Jim had the ring ready, too. He had carried it long enough. It made a

little smoldering glimmer in the dusk church. He knelt by Charity during

the prayer, and helped her to her feet, and the little clergyman kissed

her with fearsome lips. Jim nearly kissed him himself.

He did hug Mrs. McGillicuddy, and pressed into her hand a bill that she

thought was a dollar and blessed him for. When she got home and found

what it was she almost fainted into one of her own tubs.

Jim left a signed check for the minister, with the sumlines blank, and

begged him not to be a miser. They left with him a great doubt as to

what the Church would do to him for doing what he had done for his

chapel. But he was as near to a perfection of happiness as he was likely

ever to be.

His future woes were for him, as Charity's and Jim's were for them.

They would be sufficient to their several days; but for this black rainy

night there were no sorrows.

It was too late to get back to the city and luxury--and notoriety. They

stayed where they were and were glad enough. They expected to fare worse

on the battle-front in France where they would spend their honeymoon.

There was some hesitation as to which of their two rooms at the hotel

was the less incommodious, but the furniture had been magically changed.

Everything was velvet and silk; what had been barrenness was a noble

simplicity; what had been dingy was glamorous.

The ghastly dinner sent up from the dining-room was a great banquet,

and the locomotive whistles and the thunderous freight-cars were

epithalamial flutes and drums.

Outside, the world was a rainy, clamorous, benighted place. And

to-morrow they must go forth into it again. But for the moment they

would snatch a little rapture, finding it the more fearfully beautiful

because it was so dearly bought and so fleeting, but chiefly beautiful

because they could share it together.

They were mated from the first, and all the people and the trials that

had kept them apart were but incidents in a struggle toward each other.

Henceforth they should win on side by side as one completed being, doing

their part in war and peace, and compelling at last from the world,

along with the blame and the indifference that every one has always had

from the world, a certain praise and gratitude which the world gives

only to those who defy it for the sake of what their own souls tell them

is good and true and honorable.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's We Can't Have Everything, by Rupert Hughes