And now comes the strange, the almost unbelievable part. One morning
when we had been married two years, I left the house to go to the
office of one of my most intimate friends in the parish--a doctor who
lived near us, who was unmarried, and who had prescribed now and then
for my wife. As I went out, Kathy asked me to return to him a magazine
which she handed me. It was wrapped and tied with a string. I had to
wait in the doctor's office, and I unwrapped the magazine and untied
the string, and between the leaves I found a note to--my friend.
Why do people do things like that? She might have telephoned what she
had to say; she might have written it, and have sent it through the
mails. But she chose this way, and let me carry to another man the
message of her love for him.
For that was what the note told. There was no doubt, and I walked out
of the office and went home. In other times with other manners, I
might have killed him. If I had loved her, I might; I cannot tell.
But I went home.
She seemed glad that I knew. And she begged that I would divorce her
and let her marry him.
Dear Clear Eyes, who read this, what do you think of me? Of this story?
And what did I think? I who had dreamed, and studied and preached, and
had never--lived? I who had hated the sordid? I who had thought
myself so high?
As I married her, so I gave her a divorce. And as I would not have her
name and mine smirched, I separated myself from her, and she won her
plea on the ground of desertion.
Do you know what that meant in my life? It meant that I must give up
my church. It meant that I must be willing to bear the things which
might be said of me. Even if the truth had been known, there would
have been little difference, except in the sympathy which would have
been vouchsafed me as the injured party. And I wanted no man's pity.
And so I went forth, deprived of the right to lift up my voice and
preach--deprived of the right to speak to the thousands who had packed
my church. And now--what meaning for me had the candles on the altar,
what meaning the voices in the choir? I had sung too, in the light of
the holy candles, but it was ordained that my voice must be forever
still.
I fought my battle out one night in the darkness of my church. I
prayed for light and I saw none. Oh, Clear Eyes, why is light given to
a man whose way is hid? I went forth from that church convinced that
it was all a sham. That the lights meant nothing; that the music meant
less, and that what I had preached had been a poetic fallacy.