CHAPTER XXXVIII

"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."