We Can\'t Have Everything

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If the spoken word is impossible to recall, how much more
irretrievable the word that is printed in millions of newspapers.
The name of Dyckman was a household word. It resounded now in every
household throughout the country, and across the sea, where the
name had become familiar in all the nations from the big financial
dealings of the elder Dyckman as a banker for the Allies.

Reporters played about Jim Dyckman that night as if they were
_banderilleros_ and he a raging bull. He fought them with
the same success.

They tried to find Charity, but she was in the doctor's care--
actually. The doctor himself dismissed the reporters. He called them
"ghouls," which did not sweeten their hearts toward his patient.

The next day there was probably not a morning paper in the United
States in any language that failed to star the news that Mrs. Dyckman
had found her husband's relations with Mrs. Cheever intolerable.

That morning saw the conference in McNiven's office, as promised by
Beattie. But Kedzie did not appear; she had vanished to some place
where she could not be found by anybody except the man who wrote
her highly imaginative affidavits for her and the notary public
who attested her signature.

At the conference with Jim, Kedzie was represented by counsel, also
by father. Jim called the lawyer Beattie some hard old Anglo-Saxon
names, and told him that if he were a little bigger he would give
him the beating that was coming to him. Then he turned to Kedzie's
father.

"Mr. Thropp," he pleaded, "you and I have always got along all right.
You know I've tried to do the right thing by your daughter. I'm ready
to now. She's too decent a girl to have done this thing on her own.
This is the work of that rotten skunk of a lawyer--I apologize to the
other skunks and the real lawyers. She has done a frightful injustice
to the best woman on earth. She can never undo it, but surely she
doesn't want to do any more. She's through with me, I suppose, but
we ought to be able to clean up this affair respectably and quietly
and not in the front show-window of all the damned newspapers in the
world.

"Can't you and I make a little quiet gentleman's agreement to
withdraw the charge and let the divorce go through decently? I'll
make any settlement on your daughter that she wants."

Adna pondered aloud, his claim-agent instincts alert: "Settlement,
eh? What might you call settlement?"

"Whatever you'd consider fair. How much would you say was right?"

Adna filled his lungs and mouthed the deliciously liquid word as if
it were a veritable _aurum potabile_:

"Millions!"

"What!" Jim gasped.

Adna fairly gargled it again:

"Millillions!"

The greed in the old man's eyes shot Dyckman's eyes with blood.
He snarled:

"So it's the plain old blackmail, eh? Well, you can go plumb
to hell!"

"All right," said Adna, felicitously, "but we won't go alone. I
and daughter will have comp'ny. Come on, Mr. Beattie."

After they had gone Jim realized that his hatred of being gouged had
involved Charity's priceless reputation. He told McNiven to recall
Beattie, but Charity herself appeared in a new and militant humor.

The first realization that her good name was gone had crushed her.
She had built it up like a mansion, adding a white stone day by
day. When it fell about her in ruins her soul had swooned with the
disaster.

After a night and a day of groveling terror she had recaptured the
valor that makes and keeps a woman good, and she leaped from her
sick bed and her sick soul into an armor of rage.

She burst in on McNiven and Jim and demanded a share in the battle.
When Jim told her of his latest blunder she spoke up, stoutly:

"You did the right thing. To try to buy them off would be to
confess guilt. The damage is done. The whole world has read the
lie. Now we'll make it read the truth. There must be some way for
me to defend my name, and I want to know what it is."

McNiven told her that the law allowed her to enter the case and
seek vindication, but he advised her against it. She thanked him
for the information and rejected the advice. She was gray with
battle-ardor and her very nostrils were fierce.

"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.