"I must tell you," began Kimberly, "that while seemingly in a wide
authority in directing the business with which I am connected I am not
always able to do just as I please. Either voluntarily or
involuntarily, I yield at times to the views of those associated with
me. If my authority _is_ final, I prefer not to let the fact obtrude
itself. Again, circumstances are at times too strong for any business
man to set his mere personal views against. Yielding some years ago to
the representations of my associates I took into our companies a group
of Western factories controlled by a man whom I distrusted.
"To protect our interests it was necessary to move, in the premises, in
one of two ways. I favored the alternative or driving him out of the
business then and there. There were difficulties in either direction.
If we ruined him we should be accused of 'trust methods,' of crushing a
competitor, and should thus incur added public enmity. On the other
hand, I contended if the man were untrustworthy he would grow more
dangerous with power. I need hardly explain to an intelligent man,
regardless of his views on trusts, that any man of integrity, no matter
how threatening or violent a competitor he may be in the beginning, is a
man we welcome as an associate into our business. We need him just as
he needs us--but that is aside. We took the man in----"
"Against your judgment?"
"Against my judgment. I never met him until he came East. My estimates
of him were made wholly on his record, and I knew what is known to but
few--that he had ruined his own father-in-law, who died a bankrupt
directly through this man's machinations, and without ever suspecting
him. This seemed to me so unspeakable, so cannibalistic, that I never
needed to know anything further of the man. Yet I took him in,
determined only to add a new care in watching him and still to keep him
in my power so that I could crush him if he ever played false.
"He came to us--and brought his wife. I knew the man thoroughly the
instant I set eyes on him. His appearance confirmed my impression. But
I met his wife, and found in her a woman to engage respect, homage, and
devotion, one with a charm of manner and person to me unequalled; with a
modesty coupled with spirit and humor that confounded my ideas of
women--a woman, in a word, like my own mother. I am keeping nothing
from you----"
"Your confidence is safely bestowed."
"I was moved the moment I saw her. But unhappy experiences had checked
and changed me somewhat. I did not disclose my feelings though I
already knew how she affected me. If I had misjudged her husband I
would make amends--on her account. Then as I watched them the question
came to me--how is he treating her? I will make, for her sake, a new
judgment of him, I said. But I saw him as indifferent to her as if she
did not exist. I saw him neglect her and go out of his way to humiliate
her with attentions to women of our circle that were not fit to be her
servants. I asked myself whether she could be happy--and I saw that as
far as affection was concerned she sat at a hearthstone of ashes.
"Even her religion--she was a Catholic--with petty and contemptible
persecutions he had robbed her of. She was wretched and I knew it
before I let even her suspect my interest. After that I vacillated, not
knowing what I should do. I advanced and retreated in a way I never did
before. But one day--it was an accident--her ankle turned as she
stepped out of her car and as she fell forward I caught her on my arm.
She repelled me in an instant. But from that moment I determined to win
her for my wife."
The archbishop regarded him in silence.
"I am telling you the exact truth. It would profit me nothing to
deceive you, nor have I ever deceived myself or her. She fought my
persistence with all her strength. I tried to make her see that I was
right and she was wrong, and my best aid came from her own husband. I
knew it would be said I was to blame. But this man never had made a
home in any sense for his wife. And if it could be urged that he ever
did do so, it was he, long before I ever saw him, who wrecked it--not
his wife--not I."
"You say she was a Catholic. Has this poor child lost her faith?"
Kimberly paused. "I do not know. I should say that whatever her faith
was, he robbed her of it."
"Do not say exactly that. You have said we must not deceive ourselves
and you are right--this is of first importance. And for this reason
alone I say, no one can deprive me of my faith without my consent; if I
part with it, I do so voluntarily."
"I understand, quite. Whatever I myself might profess, I feel I should
have no difficulty in practising. But here is a delicate woman in the
power of a brute. There is an element of coercion which should not be
lost sight of and it might worry such a woman out of the possession of
her principles. However, whatever the case may be, she does not go to
church. She says she never can. But some keen unhappiness lies
underneath the reason--if I could explain it I should not be here."
"Has she left her husband?"
"No. He, after one of his periodical fits of abuse, and I suspect
violence, left her, and not until he knew he had lost her did he make
any effort to claim her again. But he had imperilled her health--it is
this that is my chief anxiety--wrecked her happiness, and made himself
intolerable by his conduct. She divorced him and is free forever from
his brutality.
"So I have come to you. I am to make her my wife--after I had thought
never to make any woman my wife--and for me it is a very great
happiness. It is a happiness to my brother and my sister. Through it,
the home and the family which we believed was fated to die with this
generation--my brother is, unhappily, childless--may yet live. Can you
understand all this?"
"I understand all."
"Help me in some way to reconcile her religious difficulties, to remove
if possible, this source of her unhappiness. Is it asking too much?"
The archbishop clasped his hands. His eyes fixed slowly upon Kimberly.
"You know, do you not, that the Catholic Church cannot countenance the
remarriage of a wife while the husband lives."
"I know this. I have a profound respect for the principles that
restrain the abuses of divorce. But I am a business man and I know that
nothing is impossible of arrangement when it is right that it should be
arranged. This, I cannot say too strongly, is the exceptional case and
therefore I believe there is a way. If you were to come to me with a
difficult problem within the province of my affairs as I come to you
bringing one within yours, I should find a means to arrange it--if the
case had merit."
"Unhappily, you bring before me a question in which neither the least
nor the greatest of the church--neither bishop nor pope--has the
slightest discretionary power. The indissolubility of marriage is not a
matter of church discipline; it is a law of divine institution.
Christ's own words bear no other meaning. 'What God hath joined
together let not man put asunder.' He declared that in restoring the
indissolubility of marriage he only reestablished what was from the
beginning, though Moses because of Jewish hardness of heart had
tolerated a temporary departure. No consent that I could give, Mr.
Kimberly, to a marriage such as you purpose, would in the least alter
its status. I am helpless to relieve either of you in contracting it.
"It is true that the church in guarding sacredly the marriage bond is
jealous that it shall be a marriage bond that she undertakes to guard.
If there should have been an impediment in this first marriage--but I
hardly dare think of it, for the chances are very slender. A prohibited
degree of kindred would nullify a marriage. There is nothing of this, I
take it. If consent had clearly been lacking--we cannot hope for that.
If her husband never had been baptized----"
"What difference would that make?"
"A Christian could not contract marriage with a pagan--such a union
would be null."
"Would a good Catholic enter into such a union?"
"No."
Kimberly shook his head. "Then she would not. If she had been a
disgrace to her religion she might have done it. If she had been a
woman of less character, less intelligence it might be. If she had been
a worse Catholic," he concluded with a tinge of bitterness, "she might
stand better now."
"Better perhaps, as to present difficulties; worse as to that character
which you have just paid tribute to; which makes, in part, her charm as
a woman--the charm of any good woman to a good man. You cannot have and
not have. When you surrender character a great deal goes with it."
The archbishop's words sounded a knell to Kimberly's hopes, and his
manner as he spoke reflected the passing of his momentary encouragement.
"There is nothing then that you can do."
"If there be no defect--if this first marriage was a valid marriage--I
am powerless in the circumstances. I can do nothing to allow her to
remarry while her husband lives."
Kimberly arose. "We cannot, of course, _kill_ him," he said quietly.
"And I am sorry," he added, as if to close the interview, "not to be
able to relieve her mind. I have made an effort to lay before you the
truth and the merit of the case as far as she is concerned. I had hoped
by being absolutely unreserved to invoke successfully something of that
generosity which you find edifying in others; to find something of that
mercy and tolerance which are always so commendable when your church is
not called on to exercise them."
The archbishop, too, had risen. The two men faced each other. If the
elder felt resentment, none was revealed in his manner or in his answer.
"You said a few moments ago that you could not always do as you
pleased," he began; "I, too, am one under authority." His fingers
closed over the cross on his breast. "All generosity, all mercy, all
tolerance that lie within His law, nothing could prevent my granting to
you, and to less than you--to the least of those that could ask it. I
know too much of the misery, the unhappiness of a woman's life and of
the love she gives to man, to withhold anything within my power to
alleviate her suffering.
"I have wounded you, and you rebuke me with harsh words. But do not
carry harshness against me in your heart. Let us be sure that these
words mean the same thing to both of us. If generosity and tolerance
are to override a law given by God, of what use am I? Why am I here to
be appealed to? On the other hand, if by generosity or tolerance you
mean patience toward those who do not recognize the law that binds me,
if you mean hesitancy in judging those whose views and practices differ
from my own, then I have the right to ask you to grant these qualities
to me.
"But if you appeal to the laws and principles of Catholic truth, they
_are_ intolerant, because truth cannot compromise. My church, which you
rebuke with this intolerance, is the bearer of a message from God to
mankind. If men already possessed this message there would be little
reason for the existence of such a church. The very reason of her being
is to convince men of the truth of which they are not yet convinced.
"Either she is the divinely commissioned messenger of God or she is
not--and if not, her pretensions are the most arrogant the world has
ever seen and her authority is the cruelest mockery. And so you view the
church, so the world views it--this I well know. It is painful
sometimes, it is at this moment, to insist upon a law that I have no
power to set aside--but to do less would be simply a betrayal of my
trust. And if this were the price of what you term 'tolerance,' I must
rest with my church under the stigmas you put upon us."
Kimberly's anger rose rather than abated with the archbishop's words.
"Of course," he retorted without trying to conceal his anger, "it makes
a difference who seeks relief. Your church can find no relief for a
helpless woman. As I remember, you accommodated Napoleon quickly
enough."
"Certain unworthy ecclesiastics of my church, constituting an
ecclesiastical court, pretended to find his marriage with Josephine
invalid; the church never confirmed their verdict. Thirteen of its
cardinals suffered Napoleon's penalties because of their protest against
his remarriage. Let us parallel the case. Suppose I could offer to
join with you in a conspiracy. Suppose we should assure this suffering
soul that she is free to remarry. Assume that I could make myself a
party to deceiving her--would you be party with me, to it? Do I mistake,
if I believe you could not conspire in such a baseness?"
"I do not deal in deceptions."
"Do you admire Napoleon's methods?"
"Not all of them."
"Let us, then, Mr. Kimberly, bear our burdens without invoking his
duplicity."
"We can do that, your grace," answered Kimberly coldly. "But we shall
also be obliged to bear them without relief from where we had the most
right to look for it. It was not for myself that I came to you. I
sought to restore to your church one who has been driven from it by a
wretch. I should have been better advised; I was too hopeful. Your
policy is, as it always has been, hopelessly fixed and arbitrary. You
encourage those who heap upon you the greatest abuse and contempt and
drive from your doors those disposed to meet you upon any reasonable
composition of a difficulty. I should only wound you if I attempted to
answer your last rebuke."
"You are going----"
"Yes."
"And you go with bitterness. Believe me, it is not pleasant to be
without the approbation of the well-disposed who think and believe
differently from ourselves. But if as Catholics we regard it a
privilege to possess the truth we must be prepared to pay the price it
exacts. The world will always think us wrong, a peculiar people and
with principles beyond its comprehension. We cannot help it. It has
always been so, it always must be so. Good-by."
"Good-by."
"If dividing a burden lightens it, remember you have three now to bear
yours instead of two. I shall not forget either of you in my prayers,
certainly not this dear soul of whom you have told me. This is my poor
offering to you and to her for all you have done for those that come to
you in my name."