Contrary Mary

Some of the people of my church still believe in me. Others, if you

should meet them, would say that she was a saint, and that I was the

sinner. Well, if my sin was weakness, I confess it. I should,

perhaps, never have married her; but having married her, could I have

held her mine against her will?

She married him. And a year after, she died. She was a frail little

thing, and I have nothing harsh to say of her. In a sense she was a

victim, first of her mother's ambition, next of my lack of love, and

last of all, of his pursuit.

Perhaps I should not have told you this. Except my Bishop, who asked

for the truth, and to whom I gave it, and whose gentleness and kindness

are never-to-be-forgotten things--except for him, you are the only one

I have ever told; the only one I shall ever tell.

But I shall tell you this, and glory in the telling. That if I had a

life to offer of honor and of achievement, I should offer it now to

you. That if I had met you as a dreaming boy, I would have tried to

match my dreams to yours.

You may say that with the death of my wife things have changed. That I

might yet find a place to preach, to teach--to speak to audiences and

to sway them.

But any reëntrance into the world means the bringing up of the old

story--the question--the whispered comment. I do not think that I am a

coward. For the sake of a cause, I could face death with courage. But

I cannot face questioning eyes and whispering lips.

So I am dedicated for all my future to mediocrity. And what has

mediocrity to do with you, who have "never turned your back, but

marched face forward"?

And so I am going away. Not so quickly that there will be comment.

But quickly enough to relieve you of future embarrassment in my behalf.

I do not know that you will answer this. But I know that whatever your

verdict, whether I am still to have the grace of your friendship or to

lose it forever, I am glad to have lived this one year in the Tower

Rooms. I am glad to have known the one woman who has given me back--my

boyish dreams of all women.

And now a last line. If ever in all the years to come you should have

need of me, I am at your service. I shall count nothing too hard that

you may ask. I am whimsically aware that in the midst of all this

darkness and tragedy my offer is that of the Mouse to the Lion. But

there came a day when the Mouse paid its debt. Ask me to pay mine, and

I will come--from the ends of the earth.