In this new part of the plot Mrs. Dora Feldman McDonald, who turned the old gambler's head and broke his heart through the shooting of Webster Guerin, appears as a wife solemnly repudiated in death-bed rites. At the same time Mrs. Mary Noonan McDonald, the divorced and exiled first wife, steps upon the scene to cleanse her name of the scandals to which it has been linked for twenty years.
While the two wives and the relatives stood before the coffin it came out that McDonald, shortly before his death at St. Anthony de Padua hospital, had uttered a formal repudiation of his second marriage, in the presence of the Rev. Maurice J. Dorney, pastor of St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, and several witnesses, in the persons of hospital attendants. This having been done, McDonald was permitted the last sacraments of the church and burial under the Roman ritual.
First Wife Denies Charges.
As the second wife passed under the ban, the first one came forward to claim that of which she had been dispossessed by human passion. Sitting in her apartment last night at the Vincennes hotel, Vincennes avenue and Thirty-sixth street. Mary Noonan McDonald gave her version of the romance and tragedy that have measured forty years of her life.
"For the sake of my two boys, it is now my duty to tell the world the truth about the slanders with which my name has been blackened," she said. "I am not perfect, and I have done things for which I am sorry, but I am guiltless of the charges with which I have been hounded about the world for twenty years. This I can prove, and to do so I shall remain in Chicago as long as necessary."
Repudiation of Second Wife.
It was after the solemn requiem mass over McDonald's body in the Church of the Presentation that the Rev. Father Dorney consented to tell the story of the gambler's dying repudiation of his second wife.
"I told 'Mike' McDonald before his death," said Father Dorney, "that in the eyes of the Roman Catholic church there was no such thing as divorce; that he had but one wife, the mother of his children—Mary Noonan. I told him he must publicly repudiate this other woman, and only when he said he did so could he receive the last sacraments, penance, holy eucharist, and extreme unction.
"Although he was critically ill, he said, firmly, that he would do as the church wished: that he was sorry for his sins, and he wanted to receive the last sacraments. Then, in the presence of witnesses, as is required, he made the repudiation. Later he went to confession, but what he told there I can never reveal.
"Afterwards the other woman, Dora Feldman, came to see him at the hospital, but if he was conscious he never recognized her. He was true to his promise, true to his resolution to put her out of his life."