We Can't Have Everything Part 50

"Yes."

"Then if a man violates the seventh, why shouldn't he be compelled to make rest.i.tution, too?"

"What rest.i.tution could he make?"

"Not much. He has taken from the girl he marries her name, her innocence, her youth--he can restore only one thing--her freedom."

"That is not for him to restore. 'What, therefore, G.o.d hath joined, let not man put asunder.'"

The old man grew majestic when he thundered the sonorities of Holy Writ.

Charity was cowed, but she made a craven protest:

"But who is to say what G.o.d hath joined?"

"The marriage sacraments administered by the ordained clergy established that. There is every warrant for clergymen to perform marriages; no Christian clergyman pretends to undo them."

"You believe that marriage is an indissoluble sacrament, then?"

"Indeed I do."

"Who made my marriage a sacrament?"

"I did, as the agent of G.o.d."

"And the minute you p.r.o.nounce a couple married they are registered in heaven, and G.o.d completes the union?"

"You may put it as you please; the truth is divine."

"In other words, a man like you can p.r.o.nounce two people man and wife, but once the words have escaped his lips nothing can ever correct the mistake."

"There are certain conditions which annul a marriage, but once it is genuinely ratified on earth it is ratified in heaven."

"In heaven, where, as the New Testament says in several places, married people do not live together? The woman who had seven husbands on earth, you know, didn't have any at all in heaven."

"So Christ answered the Sadducee who tempted him with questions."

"Marriage is strictly a matter of the earth, earthy, then?"

"Nothing is strictly that, my child. But what in the name of either earth or heaven has led you to come over here and break into my morning's work with such a fusillade of childish questions? You know a child can ask questions that a wise man cannot answer. Also, a child can ask questions which a wise man can answer to another wise man but not to a child. You talk like an excited, an unreasoning girl. I am surprised to hear you ridiculing the inst.i.tution of Christian marriage, but your ridicule does not prove it to be ridiculous."

"Oh, it's not ridiculous to me, Doctor Mosely; and I'm not ridiculing it. I am horribly afraid of what it has done to me and will do to me."

"Explain that, my dear."

She did explain with all bluntness: "My husband openly lives with a mistress. He prefers her to me."

The old man was stunned. He faltered: "Dear me!"

"That is most reprehensible--most! He should be subjected to discipline."

"Whose? He isn't a member of your church. And how can you discipline such a man--especially as you don't believe in divorce?"

"Have you tried to win him back to the path of duty, to waken him to a realizing sense of his obliquity?"

"Often and long. It can't be done, for he loves the other woman."

"Don't use the beautiful word love for such a debasing impulse."

"But I know he loves her!"

"How could you know?"

"I heard him tell her."

"You heard him! Do you ask me to believe that he told her that in your presence?"

"I heard him on the dictagraph."

"You have been collecting evidence for divorce, then?"

"No, I was collecting it to a.s.sure myself that the gossip I had heard was false--and to submit to you."

"But why to me?"

"When I first learned of this hideous situation my first impulse was to rush to the courts. I went to church instead. I heard your sermon. It stopped me from seeing a lawyer."

"I am glad my poor words have served some useful end."

"But have they?"

"If I have prevented one divorce I have not lived in vain."

"You don't think I have a right to ask for one?"

"Absolutely and most emphatically not."

"In spite of anything he may do?"

"Anything! He will come back to you, Charity. Possess your soul in patience. It may be years, but keep the light burning and he will return."

"In what condition?"

"My child, you shock me! You've been reading the horrible literature that gets printed under the guise of science."

"I must wait, then?"

"Yes, if you wish to separate from him for a time, your absence might waken him to a realizing sense. There are no children, I believe."

"None, yet."