New York (State) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
But the horrors of her waking hours of yesterday had not vanished. They
were waiting for her. She could not end them by the closing of her
eyes. In the cool, clear light of day she saw still more problems than
before--problems crying for decisions and contradicting each other
with a hopeless conflict of moralities. To move in any direction was to
commit ugly deeds; to move in no direction was to commit the ugliest of
all.
She rang for her coffee, and she could hardly sit up to it. Her maid
cried out at her age-worn look, and begged her to see a doctor.
“I'm going to as soon as I'm strong enough,” said Charity Coe. But she
meant the Reverend Doctor Mosely. She thought that she could persuade
even him that surgery was necessary upon that marriage. At any rate, she
determined to force a decision from him. She telephoned the unsuspecting
old darling, and he readily consented to see her. She spent an hour or
two going over her Bible and concordance. They gave her little comfort
in her plight.
When finally she dragged herself from her home to Doctor Mosely's his
butler ushered her at once into the study. Doctor Mosely welcomed her
both as a grown-up child and as an eminent dealer in good deeds.
She went right at her business. “Doctor Mosely, I loathe myself for
adding to the burdens your parish puts upon your dear shoulders but
you're responsible for my present dilemma.”
“My dear child, you don't tell me! Then you must let me help you out of
it. But first tell me--what I'm responsible for.”
“You married me to Peter Cheever.”
“Why, yes, I believe I did. I marry so many dear girls. Yes, I remember
your wedding perfectly. A very pretty occasion, and you looked
extremely well. So did the bridegroom. I was quite proud of joining two
such--such--”
“Please unjoin us.”
“Great Heavens, my child! What are you saying?”
“I am asking you to untie the knot you tied.”
The old man stared at her, took his glasses off, rubbed them, put them
on, and peered into her face to make sure of her. Then he said:
“If that were in my power--and you know perfectly well that it is
not--it would be a violation of all that I hold sacred in matrimony.”
“Just what do you hold sacred, Doctor Mosely?”
“Dear, dear, this will never do. Really, I don't wish to take advantage
of my cloth, but, really, you know, Charity, you have been taught better
than to snap at the clergy like that.”
“Forgive me; I'm excited, not irreverent. But--well, you don't believe
in divorce, do you?”
“I have stated so with all the power of my poor eloquence.”
“Do you believe that the seventh commandment is the least important of
the lot?”
“Certainly not!”
“If a man breaks any commandment he ought to do what he can to remedy
the evil?”
“Yes.”
“Then if a man violates the seventh, why shouldn't he be compelled to
make restitution, too?”
“What restitution could he make?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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