We Can\'t Have Everything

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They motored over to the village of Jolicoeur in New Jersey. There
a local attorney, a friend of McNiven's, met them and vouched for
them before the town clerk, who made out the license. He asked
Kedzie if she had been married before, and she was so young and
pretty and so plainly a girl that he laughed when he asked the
question. And for answer Kedzie just laughed, too. He wrote down
that she had never been married before. Kedzie had not really lied,
and they can't arrest a person, surely, for just laughing. Not that
she did not believe in the motto which Blanche Bates used to read
so convincingly in "The Darling of the Gods": "It is better to lie
a little than to be unhappy much."

Jim was shocked at the situation, but he could hardly be so ungallant
as to call his fiancee a liar at such a time. Besides, he had heard
that the law is interested in people's persons and not their names,
and he was marrying Kedzie personally.

When the license was made out the lawyer whispered to the town clerk
that it would be made worth his while to suppress the news for thirty
days or more, and the clerk winked and grinned. Business was slow
in matrimony, and he needed any little tips.

Now that they were licensed, Jim and Kedzie, being non-residents of
New Jersey, must wait twenty-four hours before they could be married.
They motored back to New York and went to the theater to kill the
evening. The next afternoon Jim called for Kedzie, and they motored
again to Jolicoeur for the ceremony. Mr. and Mrs. Thropp went along
as witnesses and to make sure.

The lawyer had found a starveling parson in Jolicoeur who asked
the fatal questions and pronounced the twain man and wife, adding
the warning, "Whom God hath joined, let no man put asunder." Jim
Dyckman was so befuddled that he heard it, "Let no man join whom God
hath put asunder." But he paid the preacher well and added a large
sum for the church on condition that the news of the marriage be
kept out of the public records till the last legal moment.

Dyckman had tried to do the honorable thing by Kedzie. He was
certainly generous, for a man can hardly give a woman more than
himself and all he has. Dyckman, however, had been ashamed of
a mental reservation or two. He could not repress a sneaking
feeling that he had been less the kidnapper than the napped kid
in this elopement. If anybody were to be arrested for abduction,
it would not be he.

He reviled himself for confessing this to himself, and his sympathies
went out to Kedzie because the poor child had to be yoked with
a reluctant mate. A bridegroom ought to bring to his bride, above
all things else, an eager heart. And that Jim could not bring.

He had been in his time a man and had sowed his measure of wild oats
--more than a poor man could, less than a rich man might, far less
than his unusual opportunities and the greedy throngs of temptresses
encouraged. But he had taken Kedzie seriously, never dreaming how
large a part ambition played in her devotion to him. He had been
good to her and with her. The marriage ceremony had solemnized him
further.

He had made a try at secrecy, because he felt shy about the affair.
He knew that his name would lead the newspapers to haze him, as
the rustic neighbors deride a rural couple with a noisy "chivaree."
He dreaded the head-lines, as a kind of invasion of the bridal
chamber.

In any case he had always hated flamboyant weddings with crowds and
splendor. He did not believe that a marriage should be circused.

And thus at last he and Kedzie were united into one soul and one
flesh, for better, for worse, etc., etc. Then they sped away to
the remotest pleasant hotel to be found in darkest Jersey.

Jim registered under his own name, but blushed more hotly than if
he had been engaged in an escapade. He could, perhaps, have taken
Kedzie so with less regret than under the blessing of the clergy.
For now he felt that he owed to her the all-hallowing grace of
that utter love which was something he could not bestow.

She was the first wife he had ever had, and he wished a devoutness
in that consummation. Lacking the sanctifying ardor, he was
remorseful rather than triumphant, feeling himself more of a
brute than even a bridegroom usually feels.

Kedzie did not seem to miss any perfection in his devotion, but
he imputed that more to her innocent kindliness than to any grace
of his own. The more he studied her the more he wondered why he
did not love her more. She was tremendously exquisite, ferociously
delicate, and almighty pretty. She was altogether too delectable,
too cunningly wrought and fragile, for a hulking Titan like him.

He was positively afraid of her, and greatly amazed to see that
she was not at all afraid of him. The moment the parson had done
his worst a new Kedzie had appeared. She took command of everything
instantly: ordered the parson about, shipped her mother and father
back to town as if they were bothersome children, gave directions
to Jim's chauffeur in a way that taught him who was to be who
thenceforward, and made demands upon the hotel clerk in a tone
that was more convincing of her wifehood than a marriage license
could have been.

The quality missing in Kedzie was the sense of terror and meekness
expectable in brides. Her sole distress was, to Jim's amazement,
the obscurity and solitude of their retreat. Kedzie was rapturous,
but she had not the slightest desire to hide it from the world.
She was Mrs. Jim Dyckman, and she didn't care who knew it.

Poor Kedzie had her own sorrows to mar her triumph. She was being
driven to believe that the world was as badly managed as the
Hyperfilm Studio. Providence seemed to provide tribulations for her
like a scenario editor pursuing a movie heroine. The second reel had
begun well, the rich but honest lover putting the poor but dishonest
husband to flight. And now Honeymoon Number Two! She had dreamed
of a gorgeous church ceremony with two pipe-organs, and an enlarged
cast of clergymen, and wedding guests composed of real millionaires
instead of movie "extras." But lo and behold, her adorer whisks her
off to a little town in New Jersey and the great treaty is sealed
in the shoddy parlor of a village parsonage! Gilfoyle's Municipal
Building was a cathedral compared to this.

Then with never a white ribbon fluttering, not an old shoe or
a grain of rice hurtling, the limousine of love rolled away to
a neglected roadhouse. It was attractive enough as a roadhouse,
but it was wretched as an imitation paradise.

In the face of this outrage everything else was a detail, a minor
humiliation. There was no parrot on an area fire-escape to mock her
next morning, but there was a still earlier rooster to banish sleep
and parody her triumph. She slipped out of bed and went barefoot
to the window-seat and gazed out into a garden.

She made a picture there that Ferriday would have loved in
a "close-up." Her hair was tumbling down upon and around her
shoulders, and her silken nightgown shimmered blissfully about her,
sketching her contours in iridescent lines. She gazed, through an
Elizabethan of small panes, into a garden where sunrise bloomed
rosily in petals of light. She was the prettiest thing in the
pretty picture; yet she was pouting at Fate--Fate, the old scenario
writer who never could seem to bring off a happy ending.

Jim Dyckman, waking, saw her there and rubbed his eyes. Then he
remembered. He pondered her and saw a tear or two slip out of her
eyes, run along her cheek and pitch off into the tiny ravine of her
bosom. He felt that he was a contemptible fiend who had committed
a lynchable crime upon a tender and helpless victim. He closed his
eyes in remorse, pretending to sleep, tormented like the repentant
purchaser of a "white slave"--or rather a pink slave.

They breakfasted early and prettily. Kedzie was radiant now. She
usually was when she was dealing in futures. They took up the
question of their future residence. Jim proposed all the honeymoon
haunts. Europe was out of the question, so he suggested Bermuda,
Jamaica, California, Atlantic City, North Carolina, the Adirondacks.
But Kedzie wanted to get back to New York.

This pained and bewildered him at first, because he felt that wedded
rapture should hide itself awhile in its own lovely loneliness.
Besides, his appearance in New York with a wife would involve him
in endless explanations--and there would be reporters to see, and
society editors and photographers, and his family and all his
friends.

But those were just what Kedzie wanted. And at last she told him so.

"You act as if you were ashamed to be seen with me," she cried out.

The only answering argument to this was to take her back to town
at once. The question of how and where they were to live was
important. They had not settled it in the flurry of their hasty
secret marriage.

Jim supposed that a hotel would be necessary till they found a house.
He loathed the thought of a hotel, but a suitable furnished house
might not be in the market at the moment. He suggested an apartment.

This reminded Kedzie of how Gilfoyle had sent her out on a flat-hunt.
She would have more money now, but there would doubtless be something
the matter with every place. The most urgent thing was to get out of
New Jersey. They could discuss residences in the car.

And they did discuss them. Building a new house would take years.
Buying a ready-made house and furnishing it would take days, perhaps
weeks. Kedzie could not choose which one of the big hotels she most
wanted to camp in. Each had its qualities and their defects.

When they were on the ferry crossing the river she had not yet made
up her mind. Jim had no mind to make up. He was reduced to a mere
waiter on her orders. He laughed at himself. This morning at daybreak
he had been reproaching himself for being a vicious gorilla who had
carried off a little girl; now he was realizing that the little girl
had carried him off and was making a monkey of him.

Kedzie's mental disarray was the overwhelming influence of infinite
money. For the first time in her life she could disregard price-marks
entirely. Curiously, that took away half the fun of the thing. It
seemed practically impossible for her to be extravagant. She would
learn before long that there are countless things that plutocrats
cannot afford, that they also must deny themselves much, feel shabby,
and envy their neighbors. For the present she realized only that she
had oodles of money to sprinkle.

But it takes training to spend money, and Kedzie was now unpractised.
Her wisher was so undeveloped that she could only wish for things
available to people of moderate affluence. She could not wish for
a yacht, because Jim had a yacht. She could not wish for a balloon
because she would not go up in it. She could wish for a house, but
she could not walk into it without delay. She could not live in two
hotels at once. Jewelry she could use in quantities, but even at that
she had only so much surface area to hang it on. In fact, when she
came right face to face with facts, what was there worth wishing for?
What was the use of being so dog-on rich, anyway?

And there she hung on the door-sill of her new life like a child
catching sight of a loaded Christmas tree and palsied with inability
to decide which toy to grab first, horrified to realize that he
cannot suck the orange and blow the trumpet at the same time.

When they reached the New York side of the Hudson the car rolled off
the boat into the ferry-house and into the street, and when Jim said
again, "Well, where do you want to go?" she had to sigh.

"Oh, Heavens! let's go home to my old apartment and talk it over."
She gave the address to the chauffeur, and Jim smiled grimly. It
gave him a little cynical amusement to act as passenger.

On the way up-town Kedzie realized that she was hungry and that
here would be no food in her apartment. They turned to Sherry's.
Kedzie left Jim and went into the dressing-room to smooth her hair
after the motor flight.

And now, just too late, Charity Coe Cheever happened to arrive as
the guest of Mrs. Duane. The sight of Jim alone brought a flush of
hope to Charity's eyes. She greeted him with a breeziness she had
hardly known since she was a girl. There was nothing about his
appearance to indicate that he had just come across from New Jersey,
where he had been made the husband of Mrs. Kedzie Thropp Gilfoyle.

Seeing Charity so unusually bright, Jim said, "What's happened to
you, Charity, that you look so gay and free?"

"That's what I am."

"What?"

"Gay and free. Can you keep a secret?"

"Yes."

"I'm getting divorced."

"My Lord, no!"

"Yes, my lord."

"Oh, God, and me just married!"

Charity looked for an instant as if an arrow had flashed into her
heart and struck her dead. Then with relentless courage she plucked
out the steel and let the blood gush while she smiled.

"Congratulations, old boy. Who's the lucky lady?"

"It's the little girl I yanked out of Mrs. Noxon's pool."

"The one I asked you to look out for?"

"Yes."

"Well, isn't that fine! She was very pretty. I hope you'll be ever
so happy."

"Thanks, Charity--thank you. Mighty nice of you! Of course, you
know--er--Well, here she is." He beckoned to Kedzie, who came
forward. "Mrs. Cheever, my wife. But you've met, haven't you?"

"Oh yes, indeed," said Charity Coe, with an effusion of cordiality
that roused Kedzie's suspicions more than her gratitude. The first
woman she met was already trying to get into her good graces! Charity
Coe went on, with a little difficulty:

"But Mrs. Dyckman doesn't remember me. I met you at Mrs. Noxon's."

"Oh yes," said Kedzie, and a slow, heavy crimson darkened her face
like a stream of treacle.

The first woman she met was reminding her of the time she was a
poor young dancer with neither clothes nor money. It was outrageous
to have this flung in her face at the very gate of Eden.

She was extremely cold to Charity Coe, and Charity saw it. Jim
Dyckman died the death at finding Kedzie so cruel to the one who
had befriended her. But he could not rebuke his wife, even before
his lost love. So he said nothing.

Charity caught the heartsick, hangdog look in his eyes, and she
forbore to slice Kedzie up with sarcasm. She bade her a most
gracious farewell and moved on.

Kedzie stared after her and her beautiful gown, and said: "Say, Jim,
who were the Coes, anyway? Did they make their money in trade?"

Jim said that he would be divinely condemned, or words to that
effect.

CHAPTER V

And now Kedzie Thropp was satisfied at last--at least for the time
being. She was a plump kitten, replete and purr-full, and the world
was her catnip-ball.

There was no visible horizon to her wealth. Her name was one of the
oldest, richest, noblest in the republic. She was a Dyckman now,
double-riveted to the name with a civil license and a religious
certificate. Tommie Gilfoyle had politely died, and like an obliging
rat had died outside the premises. Hardly anybody knew that she had
married him, and nobody who knew was going to tell.

Kedzie forgot Charity in the joy of ordering a millionaire's
luncheon. This was not easy. She was never a glutton for food;
excitement dimmed what appetite she had, and her husband, as she
knew, hated made dishes with complex sauces.

Kedzie was baffled by the futility of commanding a lot of things
she could not eat, just for the fun of making a large bill. She was
like the traditional prospector who struck it rich and, hastening
to civilization, could think of nothing to order but "forty dollars'
worth of pork and beans."

Kedzie had to satisfy her plutocratic pride by bossing the waiter
about, by complaining that the oysters were not chilled and the
sherry was. She sent back the salad for redressing and insisted
that the meat was from cold storage. She was no longer the poor
girl afraid of the waiter.

Kedzie was having a good time, but she regretted that her
wedding-ring was so small. She felt that wives ought to wear some
special kind of plume, the price of the feather varying with the
bank account. Kedzie would have had to carry an umbrella of plumes.

Still, she did pretty well on her exit. She went out like a million
dollars. But her haughtiness fell from her when she reached home
and found Mr. and Mrs. Thropp comfortably installed there, saving
hotel bills.

Charity Coe had gone out feeling a million years old. She left
the presence of Kedzie in a mood of tragic laughter. She was
in one of those contemptible, ridiculous plights in which good
people frequently find themselves as a result of kindliness and
self-sacrifice.

For well-meant actions are as often and as heavily punished in
this world as ill-meant--if indeed the word _punishment_ has
any respectability left. It is certainly obsolescent.

Many great good men, such as Brand Whitlock, the saint of Belgium,
had been saying that the whole idea of human punishment of human
beings is false, cruel, and futile, that it has never accomplished
anything worth while for either victim or inflictor. They place it
among the ugly follies, the bloody superstitions that mankind has
clung to with a fanaticism impervious to experience. They would
change the prisons from hells to schools and hospitals.

Even the doctrine of a hell beyond the grave is rather neglected
now, except by such sulphuric press agents as Mr. Sunday. But in
this world we cannot sanely allege that vice is punished and virtue
rewarded until we know better what virtue is and what is vice. All
that it is safe to say is that punishment is a something unpleasant
and reward a something pleasant that follows a deed--merely follows
in point of time, not in proof of judgment.

So the mockery of Charity's good works was neither a punishment
nor a ridicule. It was a coincidence, but a sad one. Charity had
befriended Kedzie without making a friend thereby; she had lost,
indeed, her good friend Jim. Charity's affection for Jim would make
her suspect in Kedzie's eyes, and Kedzie's gratitude had evidently
already cut its sharper-than-a-serpent's wisdom tooth.

Charity had been patient with her husband and had lost him. She
had asked the Church for her freedom and had been threatened with
exile. Then her husband had demanded his freedom and forced her
to choose between blackening her own soul with the brand "divorcee"
or blackening her husband's mistress's baby's soul with the brand
"illegitimate."

She had preferred to take the shame upon herself. But who would give
her credit? She knew how false was the phrase that old Ovid uttered
but could not comfort even himself with, "The mind conscious of
rectitude laughs at the lies of gossip." No woman can afford such
security.

Charity had such a self-guying meekness, indeed, that instead of
clothing herself in the robes of martyrdom she ridiculed herself
because of one thing: In a pigeonhole of her brain a little
back-thought had lurked, a dim hope that if she gave her husband
the divorce he implored she might be free to remold her shattered
life nearer to her heart's desire--with Jim Dyckman. Her husband,
indeed, had taunted her with that intention, and now she had no
sooner launched her good name down the slippery ways of divorce
than she found Jim Dyckman married and learned that her premature
and unwomanly hopes for him were ludicrously thwarted!

She went to McNiven's office with a dark life ahead of her. She had
no desire left except to disentangle herself from Peter Cheever's
life as quietly and swiftly as possible. She told McNiven this and
said:

"How quickly can the ghastly job be finished?"

"Theoretically it could be done in a day, but practically it takes
a little longer. For we must avoid the look of collusion like the
plague. So we'll allow, say, a week. If we're lucky with our judges,
it may take less."

Then he outlined the steps to be taken. An unusual chain of
circumstances enabled him to carry them out with unexpected neatness
and despatch, so that the case became a very model of how gracefully
the rigid laws of divorce could be manipulated in the Year of Our
Lord 1916 and of the Founding of the Republic 140.

It may be interesting to outline the procedure as a social document
in chicanery, or social surgery, as one wills to call it.

McNiven first laid under Charity's eyes a summons and complaint
against Peter Cheever. She glanced over it and found it true except
that Zada L'Etoile was not named; Cheever's alleged income was vastly
larger than she imagined, and her claim for alimony was exorbitant.

Her first question was: "Who is this unknown woman going by the name
of Sarah Tishler? I thought Miss L'Etoile was to be the only woman
mentioned."

McNiven explained: "L'Etoile is her stage name. She doesn't know
her real name herself, for she was taken from the foundling-asylum
as a child by a family named Tishler. We have taken advantage of
that disadvantage."

Charity bowed to this, but she protested the income credited to
her husband.

"Peter doesn't earn half as much as that."

"How do you know what he earns?" said McNiven.

"He's told me often enough."

"Do you believe all he told you?"

"No; but, anyway, I don't want any of his old alimony. I have money
enough of my own."

"That can be arranged later, but if you don't swear to this as it
lies you can't have your divorce."

"Why not?"

"Because there has to be a contest, and we've got to give his lawyer
something to fight."

Charity yielded wearily. She fought against making an affidavit to
the truth of the complaint, but when NcNiven said, "No affidavit,
no divorce," she took her oath before the clerk who was called in
as a notary public.

"Now you may go home," said McNiven; and Charity stole out, feeling
herself a perjured criminal. Then the divorce-mill began to grind.

A process-server from McNiven's office went across Broadway to
Tessier's office, where Cheever was waiting. He handed the papers
to Cheever, who handed them to Tessier, who hastily dictated an
answer denying the adultery, the alleged income, and the propriety
of the alimony claimed.

Tessier and Cheever visited McNiven in his office and served him
with this answer. The two lawyers then dictated an agreement to
a reference, Tessier adding a statement that he considered his
client equipped with a good defense and that he intended to oppose
the suit in good faith.

Their clerks took this to the County Court House in City Hall Square
and filed it with the clerk of the Supreme Court, Special Term,
Part II.

Justice Cardwell, before leaving his chambers, read the papers and
issued an order naming as referee the lawyer Henry Firth.

Here for a moment the veil of secrecy was rent, for this order
could not be suppressed. It was published in _The Law Journal_
the next morning, and the eager reporters reading therein that
Mrs. Peter Cheever was suing her husband for a divorce on statutory
grounds, dashed to the records and learned that she accused him
of undue intimacy with an unknown woman going by the name of Sarah
Tishler.

By selecting an obscure town this publicity might have been deferred,
but it would have meant delay in the case as well.

A flock of reporters sped like hawks for Charity's home, where they
were denied admittance; for Cheever's office, where they were told
that he was out of town; and even for Zada L'Etoile's apartment,
where they were informed that she had left the State, as indeed she
had. Sarah Tishler had a right, being named as co-respondent, to
enter the case and defend her name, but she waived the privilege.

The evening papers made what they could of the sensation, but nobody
mentioned Zada, for nobody knew that fate had tried to conceal her
by naming her Tishler, and nobody quite dared to mention her without
legal sanction.

On the next day Lawyer Firth held court in his office. Reporters were
excluded, and the lawyers and detectives and Cheever and Charity, who
had to be present, declined to answer any of the questions rained
upon them in the corridors and the elevators.

Mr. Firth was empowered to swear in witnesses and take testimony.
The evidence of the detectives, corroborated by the evidence of
a hall-boy and a janitor and by proof of the installation of the
dictagraph, seemed conclusive to Mr. Firth.

Cheever denied that he had committed the alleged adultery and gave
proof that his income was not as stated. Attorney Tessier evaded
the evidence of adultery, but fought hard against the evidence of
prosperity. Referee Firth made his report finding the defendant
guilty of the statutory offense, and ordered a decree of divorce,
with a diminished alimony. He appended a transcript of the evidence
and filed it with the Clerk of the County of New York. The statutory
fee for a referee was ten dollars a day, but the lawyers had quietly
agreed on the payment of a thousand dollars for expediting the case.
With this recompense Mr. Firth ended his duties in the matter.

McNiven prepared a motion to confirm the report of the referee and
took it to Tessier, who accepted service for his client. McNiven then
went to the county clerk and filed a notice that the motion would be
called up the next morning. The clerk put it on the calendar of
Special Term, Part III.