We Can\'t Have Everything

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Kedzie's lawyer, however, felt it good tactics to assume now the
pose of benevolent patience with an erring one. Seeing that Charity
was in danger of stirring the hearts of the jurors by her suffering,
he forestalled their sympathy and murmured:

"I will wait till Mrs. Cheever has regained control of herself."

Instantly Charity's pride quickened in her. She wanted none of
that beast's pity. She responded to the strange sense of discipline
before fate that makes a man walk soldierly to the electric chair;
inspires a caught spy to stand placidly before his own coffin and
face the firing-squad; led Joan of Arc after one panic of terror
to wait serene among the crackling fagots.

The lawyer was relieved. He had been afraid that Charity would weep.
He resumed the probe:

"And now, Mrs. Cheever, if you are quite calm I will proceed. I
regret the necessity of asking these questions, but you were not
compelled to come into court. You came of your own volition, did
you not?"

"Yes."

"Witnesses have testified and you have not denied that you arrived
at the Viewcrest Inn late at night; that you saw the defendant
register; that you and he went to the only room left; that the
waiter left you together and found you together the next morning.
You have heard that testimony, have you not?"

"Yes."

"Knowing all this, do you still claim that your conduct was above
reproach?"

"For discretion, no. I was foolish and indiscreet."

"And that was all?"

"Yes."

"You are innocent of the charge, then?"

"Yes."

"Do you ask the jury to believe you?"

"I ask them to--yes! Yes! I ask them to."

"Do you expect them to?"

"Oh, they ought to."

"If you had been guilty of misconduct would you admit it?"

"Yes."

"Do you expect them to believe that?"

"If they knew me they would."

"Well, we haven't all the privilege of knowing you as well as the
defendant does. You may step down, Mrs. Cheever, thank you."

McNiven rose. "One moment, Mrs. Cheever. You testified on direct
examination that the defendant left you immediately after the waiter
did?"

"Yes."

"And that he did not return till the next morning, just before the
waiter returned."

"Yes."

"That is all, Mrs. Cheever."

McNiven would have done better to leave things alone. The sturdy
last answer of Charity and the unsportsmanlike sneer of Kedzie's
lawyer had inclined the jury her way. McNiven's explanation awoke
again the skeptic spirit.

Charity descended from her pillory with a feeling that she had said
none of the things she had planned to say. The eloquence of her
thoughts had seemed incompatible somehow with the witness-stand.
At a time when she needed to say so much she had said so little
and all of it wrong.

CHAPTER XIII

Jim Dyckman's heart was so wrung with pity for Charity when she
stepped down and sought her place in a haze of despair that he
resolved to make a fight for her himself. He insisted on McNiven's
calling him to the stand, though McNiven begged him to let ill
enough alone.

He took the oath with a fierce enthusiasm that woke the jury a
little, and he answered his own lawyer's questions with a fervor
that stirred a hope in the jury's heart, a sorely wrung heart it
was, for its pity for Charity was at war with its pity for Kedzie,
and its admiration for Jim Dyckman, who was plainly a gentleman and
a good sport even if he had gone wrong, could only express itself
by punishing Kedzie, whose large eyes and sweet mouth the jury could
not ignore or resist.

When his own lawyer had elicited from Jim the story as he wanted
it told, which chanced to be the truth, McNiven abandoned him to
Beattie with the words:

"Your witness."

Beattie was in fine fettle. He had become a name talked about
transcontinentally, and now he was crossing swords with the famous
Dyckman. And Dyckman was at a hideous disadvantage. He could
only parry, he could not counter-thrust. There was hardly a trick
forbidden to the cross-examiner and hardly a defense permitted to
the witness.

And yet that very helplessness gave the witness a certain shadowy
aide at his side.

Jim's heart was beating high with his fervor to defend Charity, but
it stumbled when Beattie rose and faced him. And Beattie faced him
a long while before he spoke.

A slow smile crept over the lawyer's mien as he made an excuse for
silence out of the important task of scrubbing his eye-glasses.

Before that alkaline grin Jim felt his faith in himself wavering.
He remembered unworthy thoughts he had entertained, graceless
things he had done; he felt that his presence here as a knight of
unassailable purity was hypocritical. He winced at all points from
the uncertainty as to the point to be attacked. His life was like
a long frontier and his enemy was mobilized for a sudden offensive.
He would know the point selected for the assault when he felt the
assault. The first gun was that popular device, a supposititious
question.

"Mr. Dyckman, you are accused of--well, we'll say co-respondence
with the co-respondent. You have denied your guilt in sundry
affidavits and on the witness-stand here. Remembering the classic
and royal ideal of the man who 'perjured himself like a gentleman,'
and assuming--I say 'assuming' what you deny--that you had been
guilty, would you have admitted it?"

"I could not have been guilty."

"Could not? Really! you astonish me! And why not, please?"

"Because Mrs. Cheever would never have consented. She is
a good woman."

This unexpected answer to the old trick question jolted Beattie
perceptibly and brought the jury forward a little. The tears gushed
to Charity's eyes and she felt herself unworthy a champion so pious.

Beattie acknowledged the jolt with a wry smile and returned:

"Very gallant, Mr. Dyckman; you want to be a gentleman and avoid
the perjury, too. But I must ask you to answer the question.
Suppose you had been guilty."

Silence.

"Answer the question!"

Silence.

"Will his Honor kindly instruct the witness to answer the question?"

Jim broke in, "His Honor cannot compel me to suppose something
that is impossible."

The jury rejoiced unwillingly, like the crowd in the bleachers
when a man on the opposing team knocks a home run. The jury liked
Jim better. But what they liked, after all, was what they falsely
imagined. They assumed that Jim had been out on a lark and got
caught and was putting up a good scrap for his lady friend. He was
a hum-dinger, and no wonder the lady fell for him. Into such slang
their souls translated the holiness of his emotions, and they voted
him guilty even in awarding him their admiration for his defense.

Beattie paused again, then suddenly asked, "Mr. Dyckman, how long
have you loved Mrs. Cheever?"

"What do you mean by 'loved'?"

"It is a familiar word. Answer the question."

"I have admired Mrs. Cheever since she was a child. We have always
been friends."

"Your 'friendship' was considerably excited when she married
Mr. Cheever, wasn't it?"

"I--I thought he was unworthy of her."

"Was that why you beat him up in a fist fight at your club?"

This startled the entire court. Even reporters who had missed the
news were excited. McNiven sprang to his feet, crying:

"I 'bject! There is no evidence before the court that there ever
was such a fight. The question is incompirrelvimmaterial."

"S'tained!" said the judge.

Beattie was satisfied. The arrow had been pulled out, but its poison
remained. He made use of another of his tantalizing pauses, then:

"It was shortly afterward that Mrs. Cheever divorced her husband,
was it not?"

"I 'bject," McNiven barked.

"S'tained!" the judge growled.

"Let us get back to the night when you and Mrs. Cheever went
a-motoring." Beattie smiled. "There was a beautiful moon on that
occasion, I believe."

The jury grinned. The word "moon" meant foolishness. Beattie took
Jim through the story of that ride and that sojourn at the tavern,
and every question he asked condemned Jim to a choice of answers,
either alternative making him out ridiculously virtuous or criminal.

Beattie rehearsed the undenied facts, but substituted for the
glamour of innocence in bad luck the sickly glare of cynicism. He
asked Jim if he had ever heard of the expression, "The time, the
place, and the girl." He had the jury snickering at the thought of
a big rich youth like Jim being such a ninny, such a milksop and
mollycoddle, as to defy an opportunity so perfect.

The public mind has its dirt as well as its grandeurs; the pool
that mirrors the sky is easily roiled and muddied. It was possible
for the same people to abhor Jim and Charity for being guilty and
to feel that if they were not guilty with such an occasion they
were still more contemptible.

Thus ridicule, which shakes down the ancient wrongs and the tyrants'
pretenses, shakes down also the ancient virtues and the struggling
ideals.

Finally Beattie said, "You say you left the fair corespondent
alone in the hotel parlor?"

"I did."

"All alone?"

"Yes."

"And you went out into the night, as the saying is?"

"Yes."

"But you testified that it was raining."

"It was."

"You went out into the rain?"

"Yes."

"To cool your fevered brow?"

Silence from Jim; shrieks of laughter from the silly spectators.
The jury was shattered with amusement; the judge wiped a grin
from his lips. Beattie resumed:

"Where did you sleep?"

"In the office chair."

"You paid for the parlor! You registered! And you slept in the
chair!" [Gales of laughter. His Honor threatens to clear the court.]
"Who saw you asleep in the chair?"

"I don't know--I was asleep."

"Are you sure that you did not just dream about the chair?"

"I am sure."

"That's all."

Jim stepped down, feeling idiotic.

There is a dignity that survives and is illumined by flames of
martyrdom, but there is no dignity that is improved by a bladder-
buffeting. Jim slunk back to his place and cowered, while the
attorneys made their harangues.

McNiven spoke with passion and he had the truth on his side, but
it lacked the convincing look. Beattie rocked the jury-box with
laughter and showed a gift for parodying seriousness that would
carry him far on his career. Then he switched to an ardent defense
of the purity of the American home, and ennobled the jury to a
knighthood of chivalry and of democracy. As he pointed out, the
well-known vices of the rich make every household unsafe unless
they are sternly checked by the dread hand of the law.

He called upon the jury to inflict on the Lothario a verdict that
would not only insure comfort to the poor little woman whose home
had been destroyed, but would also be severe enough to make even
a multimillionaire realize and remember that the despoiler of the
American home cannot continue on his nefarious path with impunity.

The judge gave a long and solemn charge to the jury. It was fair
according to the law and the evidence, but the evidence had been
juggled by the fates.

The jury retired and remained a hideous while.

CHAPTER XIV

It was only a pleasant clubby discussion of the problem of Jim's
and Charity's innocence that delayed the jury's verdict. One or two
of the twelve had a sneaking suspicion that they had told the truth,
but these were laughed out of their wits by the wiser majority who
were not such fools as to believe in fairy-stories.

As one of the ten put it: "That Dyckman guy may have gone out into
the rain, but, believe me, he knew enough to come in out of the
wet."

A very benevolent old gentleman who sympathized with everybody
concerned made a little speech:

"It seems to me, gentlemen, that when a man and wife have quarreled
as bitterly as those two and have taken their troubles to court,
there is no use trying to force them together again. If we give
a verdict of not guilty, that will leave Mr. and Mrs. Dyckman
married. But they must hate each other by now and that would mean
lifelong misery and sin for both. So I think we will save valuable
time and satisfy everybody best by giving a verdict of guilty. It
won't hurt Dyckman any."

"What about Mrs. Cheever?"

"Oh, she's gotta lotta money."

None of the jury had ever had so much as that and it was equivalent
to a good time and the answer to all prayers, so they did not
fret about Charity's future. On the first ballot, after a proper
reminiscence of the amusing incidents of the trial they proceeded
to a decision. The verdict was unanimous that Jim was guilty as
charged. Charity was not to get her forty dollars nor her good name.

When the jurors filed back into the box the court came to attention
and listened to the verdict.

Jim and Charity were dazed as if some footpad had struck them
over the head with a slingshot. Kedzie was hysterical with relief.
She had suffered, too, throughout the trial. And now she had been
vindicated.

She went to the jury and she shook hands with each member and
thanked him.

"You know I accept the verdict as just one big beautiful birthday
present." It was not her birthday, but it sounded well, and she
added, "I shall always remember your kindly faces. Never can I
forget one of you."

Two days later she met one of the unforgetable jurors on the street
and did not recognize him. He had been one-twelfth of her knightly
champions, but she cut him dead as an impertinent stranger when he
tried to speak to her. She cut Skip Magruder still deader when he
tried to ride home with her.

He came to call and showed an inclination to settle down as a member
of Kedzie's intimate circle. He had speedily recovered from his
first awe at the sight of her splendor. Finding himself necessary
to her, he grew odiously presumptuous. She had not dared to rebuke
him. Now she thought she would have to buy him off. Skip had had his
witness fees and his expenses, and nothing else for his pains. Then
Beattie warned Kedzie that it would look bad to pay Skip any money;
it might cast suspicion on his testimony. Kedzie would not have done
that for worlds. Besides, when she learned what Mr. Beattie's fee
was to be, she felt too poor to pay anybody anything.

The only thing she could do, therefore, was to remind Skip of the
beautiful old song, "Lovers once, but strangers now."

"Besides, Skippie dear, I'm engaged."

"Already?"

"Yes."

"You woiked that excuse on me when you tried to explain why you
toined me down when I wrote you the letter at the stage door."

"Yes, I did."

"Say, Anitar, you'd oughter git some new material. Your act is
growin' familiar."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Oh no! You wasn't never in vawdvul, was you, oh, no! not a tall!"
Kedzie played her pout on him, but Skip glared at her, shook his
head, kicked himself with his game leg, and said, "I gotta give
you credit, Anitar, you're the real thing as a user."

"A what?" said Kedzie.

"A user," he explained in his elliptical style. "You're one them
dames uses a fella like he was a napkin, then trows him down. You
used me twice and used me good. I desoived the second one, for I'm
the kind o' guy gets his once and comes back for more in the same
place. I'd go tell Jimmie Dyckman I was a liar but I ain't anxious
to be run up for poijury, and I ain't achin' to advertise what a
John I been. So long, Anitar, and Gaw delp the next guy crosses
your pat'."

That was the last Kedzie saw of Skip. She did not miss him. She hated
him for annoying her pride and she hated the law that she used for
her divorce, because it required her to wait three months before the
interlocutory decree should become final. The time was hazardously
long yet short, in a sense, for her alimony was to end at the end of
three months if she married again, and marrying again was her next
ambition. The judge had fixed her alimony at $30,000 a year, and an
allowance for costs. Beattie tried to make a huge cost settlement,
but McNiven knew of Kedzie's interest in the Marquess and he refused
the bait. So Kedzie got only $7,500. She found it a ruinously small
capital to begin life as a Marchioness on--she that had had only
two dollars to begin life in New York on! The Marquess was very
nice about it, and said he didn't want any of Dyckman's dirty money.
But Kedzie thought of life in England with alarm, especially as
she had the American comic-opera idea that all foreign peers are
penniless. She dreaded to think what might happen in that three
months' interregnum between husband II and husband III. Enough was
happening in the rest of the world.

The _annus miserabilis_ 1917 had begun with the determination
of the German Empire to render the seas impassable and to withdraw
the pledge to President Wilson that merchant ships should not be
sunk till the passengers and crew had a chance to get into open
boats. On January 31, 1917, "Frightfulness" began anew, and the
undersea fleets, enormously increased, were set loose in shoals.
Having no commerce of her own afloat, it was safe for Germany to
sink any vessel anywhere.

Kedzie began to wonder if she would ever dare to sail for he
future ancestral home, and if she did how long her ship would
last.

On February 3d the U-53, which had sunk Strathdene's ship off
Newport, sank an American freighter bound from Galveston to
Liverpool. Other American vessels followed her into the depths.
On February 27th the Laconia, of 18,000 tons burden, was torpedoed
and twelve passengers died of exposure in the bitter weather. In
one of the open boats a Catholic priest administered the last rites
to seven persons.

Mrs. Hoy, of Chicago, died in the arms of her daughter and her body
slipped into the icy waves, to be followed by her daughter's a few
minutes later.

These seemed to make up a sufficient total of American women
drowned, and on the next day the President declared that the
long-awaited "overt act" had been committed. He asked Congress
to declare that peace with Germany was ended. Her ambassador was
sent home and ours called home.

In March the British captured Bagdad and the Germans suddenly
retreated along a sixty-mile front in France; then the Russian
revolution abruptly changed the almighty Czar into a weeping
prisoner digging snow. And the vast burying-ground of Siberia
gave up its living dead in a sudden apocalypse of freedom. Fifty
thousand sledges sped across the steppes laden with returning
exiles, chains stil dangling at many a wrist from the dearth of
blacksmiths to strike them off.

Kedzie did not value the privilege of living in times when epochs
of history were crowded into weeks and cycles completed in days.
The revolution in Russia disturbed Kedzie as it did many a monarch,
and she said to her mother:

"What a shame to treat the poor Czar so badly! Strathie and I were
planning to visit Russia after the war, too. The Czar was awfully
nice to Strathie once and I was sure we'd be invited to live right
in the Duma or the Kremlin or whatever they call the palace. And
now they've got a cheap and nasty old republic over there! And
they're talking of having republics everywhere. What could be more
stupid? As if everybody was born free and equal. Mixing all the
aristocrats right up with the common herd!"

Mrs. Thropp agreed that it was simply terrible.

"Do you know what?" Kedzie gasped.

"What?" her mother echoed.

"I've just had a hunch. I'll bet that by the time I get married to
Strathie there'll be nothing left but republics, and no titles at
tall. His people came over with Henry the Conqueror and his title
will last just long enough for me to reach for it, and then--woof!
Wouldn't it be just my luck to become plain Mrs. Strathdene after
all I've had to go through! Honestly, m'mah, don't I just have the
dog-on'dest luck!"

"It's perfectly awful," said Mrs. Thropp, "but bad luck can't go
on forever."

On April 2d the future Mrs. Strathdene was cheered by an
extraordinary spectacle--newspapers in the Metropolitan Opera
House! Kedzie was there with her waning Marquess. The occasion
was rare enough in itself, for an American opera was being heard:
"The Canterbury Pilgrims," with Mr. Reginald De Koven's music to
Mr. Percy Mackaye's text.

Suddenly, in the _entr'acte_ the unheard-of thing--the
newspapers--appeared in the boxes and about the house! People
spread evening extras on the rails and read excitedly that President
Wilson had gone to Congress and asked it to declare that a state of
war existed and had existed.

The Italian manager directed the Polish conductor to play "The
Star-Spangled Banner" and the three thousand men and women of the
audience made a chorus on the obverse side of the curtain.

Mr. Gerard, lately returned from Germany, called for "Three cheers
for President Wilson," and there were loud huzzahs for him and for
the Allies.

"You and I are allies now," Kedzie murmured to the Marquess. She
thought a trifle better of her country.

The Austrian prima donna fainted and could not appear in the last
act, and everybody went home expecting to see the vigor of Uncle Sam
displayed in a swift and tremendous delivery of a blow long, long
withheld.

The vigor was displayed in a tremendous delivery of words far better
withheld.

It was a week before Congress agreed that war existed and over a
month passed before Congress agreed upon the nature of the army to
be raised. Nearly four months passed before the draft was made.

Jim Dyckman was almost glad of the delay, for it gave him hope
of settling his spiritual affairs in time to be a soldier. He was
determined to marry Charity as soon as the three months' probation
term was over. But Charity said no! Cowering in seclusion from the
eyes of her world, she cherished a dream that when the war broke and
the dead began to topple and the wounded to bleed, she might expiate
the crime she had not committed, by devoting to her own people her
practised mercies. She was afraid to offer them now, or even to make
her appearance among the multitudinous associations that sprang up
everywhere in a frantic effort to make America ready in two weeks
for a war that had been inevitable for two years. Not only a war
was to be fought, but a world famine.

Charity was ashamed to show her white face even at the Red Cross.
She busied herself with writing checks for the snow-storm of appeals
that choked her mail. Otherwise she pined in idleness, refusing more
than ever the devotion that Jim offered her now in a longing that
increased with denial.

She suffered infinitely, yet mocked her own sufferings as petty
trifles. She contrasted them with what the millions on millions
of Europe's men were enduring as they huddled in the snow-drenched,
grenade-spattered trenches, or agonized in all their wounds out in
the No-Man's Land between the trenches. She told herself that her
own heartaches were negligible, despicable against the innumerable
anguishes of the women who saw their men, their old men, their
young men, their lads, going into the eternal mills of the war,
while hunger and loneliness and toil unknown to women before made
up their daily portion.

She accused herself for still remaining apart from that continental
sisterhood of grief. All America seemed to be playing Hamlet,
debating, deferring, letting irresolution inhibit every necessary
duty.

Since her country had disowned her and refused her justice or
chivalry, she was tempted to disown her country and claim citizenship
among those who could fight and could sacrifice and could endure.

It was not easy to persuade a captain to take a woman passenger
aboard his ship, now that the German ambition was to sink a million
tons a month, but she resolved again to go if she had to stowaway.

First she would finish her affairs, make her will, and burn her
letters. She had neglected to change the testament she had signed
when she became Peter Cheever's wife, and took a pride in making him
her sole heir. It would be ridiculous to make him such a post-mortem
gift now, now that he had not only money enough, but a wife that
satisfied him, and a child.

She wondered whom to leave her money to. Jim Dyckman's name kept
recurring to her and she smiled at that, for he had more money than
he could use. Besides, the mention of his name in her will would
confirm the public belief in their intrigue. She had nobody to
inflict her inheritance upon but a few relatives, mostly rich
enough. She decided to establish a fund for her own orphans, the
children of other women whom she had adopted.

Making a will is in sort a preliminary death. Making hers, Charity
felt herself already gone, and looked back at life with a finality
as from beyond the grave. It was a frightful thing to review her
journey from a lofty angel's-eye view.

Her existence looked very petty. Now that her hope and her senses
were ended, she felt a grudge against the world that she had got so
little out of. She had tried to be a good woman, and her altruism
had won her such a bad name that if Dr. Mosely should preach her
funeral sermon he would feel that he had revealed a wonderful spirit
of forbearance in leaving it unmentioned that she was an abandoned
divorcee.

If she had been actually guilty of an intrigue with Jim Dyckman
Dr. Mosely would have forgiven her even more warmly, because it was
a woman taken in actual adultery who was forgiven, while Charity
had tactlessly fought the charge and demanded vindication instead
of winsomely appealing for pity.