Contrary Mary

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.