"But the Catholic Church would and does uniformly; and the high church party in your own church would disapprove of your leniency. The vital point is that both churches and you yourself brand those who disobey as spiritually impure, or at least inferior, a stigma which appalls the best women. And so they are held as in a cruel vice, so you have held her who was to be my wife."
The reversion to the personal equation reminded the rector that this was no academic discussion.
"You have not answered my question yet. Where will you draw the line? Granting for the moment—which I by no means agree to—that gross habits of intoxication, felony, or absolute desertion are valid grounds for breaking the nuptial bond, let me cite the law to you in turn, Mr. Perry." Thereupon Mr. Prentiss stepped to the shelves again, and running through the pages of a book, discovered presently the data of which he was in search. "What do you think of these reasons?" he asked in a scorching tone. "American grounds of divorce: 'When it shall be made to appear, to the satisfaction and conviction of the court, that the parties cannot live in peace and union together, and that their welfare requires a separation,' Utah; 'Voluntarily living separate for one year,' Wisconsin; 'For any cause that permanently destroys the happiness of the petitioner and defeats the purposes of the marriage relation,' Connecticut; 'For any cause in the discretion of the court,' Kentucky; 'Whenever the judge who hears the cause decrees the case to be within the reason of the law, within the general mischief the law intended to remedy, or within what it may be presumed would have been provided against by the legislature establishing the foregoing cause of divorce, had it foreseen the specific case and found language to meet it without including cases not within the same reason, he shall grant the divorce,' Arizona; and in a host of States, 'One year's absence without reasonable cause.'"
"I told you that you seemed to have a good case," said Gordon, smiling. "But I do not think that you understand the facts, understand the real nature of the abuse, for I heartily agree that an abuse exists even from the standpoint of those who maintain that divorce should be granted on the slenderest grounds. As to the extracts which you have just read, I judge that the book is not a recent publication."
"I have reason to believe that it is authoritative."
"Undoubtedly it was so at the time. But several of the provisions in question have been repealed and are no longer law."
"Ah," said the rector. "But you cannot deny that it is still the law that a man and woman may be married in one jurisdiction and adjudged guilty of adultery or bigamy in another; that the marriage tie is broken daily on the most frivolous grounds and with the most indecent haste; and that there is wide and revolting discrepancy between the statutes of the several United States."
Gordon nodded. "I cannot deny the substantial accuracy of the indictment."
"Well, sir, how do you justify it? Is not civil society neglecting its duty?"
"I do not justify the defects in some of the legal machinery, and to this extent I agree that society is derelict. But what I wish to make clear is that nearly all the legal grounds for divorce in the several states are just and reasonable—substantially the same as in this State—and that the abuses against which they afford relief are such as render the relation of husband and wife intolerable. There are a few vague and lax exceptions such as you have cited, but they are fast disappearing. The real and the salient evil lies in the looseness of administration sanctioned in some jurisdictions, by means of which collusive divorces are obtained by pretended residents, and close scrutiny of the facts is avoided by the courts. To permit legal domicile to be acquired by a residence of three months, as in Dakota, is a flagrant invitation to fraud; but that and kindred abuses are defects in the police power, and have only a collateral bearing on the main issue between us, which is whether democracy can ever be induced to reconsider its decision that it is for the best interests of human nature that the innocent wife or husband, to whom a cruel wrong has been done, should be free to break the bond and marry again. There is the real question, Mr. Prentiss. You as a churchman—a foreign churchman I still claim—demand that the woman whose life has been blighted by a husband's brutality, sentenced for heinous crime, abandonment, or degrading abuse of liquor should remain his wife to the end, though he has killed every spark of love in her soul. The Church will never be able to convince the American people or modern democracy that this is spiritual or just."