“One of my parishioners was my present wife’s mother. She was one of the old-time abolitionists, and she was wealthy; and now, in her old age, she saw the new light, and became a Socialist. This, of course, was like gall to her family; they were powers in the state—the railroad people, who control the legislature and run the government. And so their newspapers denounced me, and denounced the university where I taught.
“Then came her daughter—a young girl out of college. I was at their home often, and we became friends. She saw how unhappy I was, and she tried to open my wife’s eyes, and to win her over to me. But, of course, she failed in that; and then, little by little we found that we loved each other. You know me—you know that I am not a base man, nor a careless man; and you will believe me when I tell you that there was nothing between us that the world could have called wrong. We knew that we loved, and we knew that there was no hope. And that went on for eight years; for eight years I renounced—and strove with every power of my heart and soul to make something out of that renunciation, to transmute it into spiritual power. And I failed—I could not do it; and in the end I knew the reason. It was not beauty and nobility—it was madness and horror; it was not life—it was death! The time came when I knew that our renunciation was simply a crime against the soul. Can you see what I mean?”
“Yes,” said Thyrsis, “I can see.”
“And see what that meant to me—the situation I faced! I was a clergyman—and preaching a new crusade to the world. It was like being in a cage, with bars of red-hot metal. A hundred times I would go towards them—and a hundred times I would shrink back. But I had to grasp them in the end.”
“I see!” whispered the other.
“The thing was becoming a scandal anyway; the world was bound to make a scandal of it, whether we would or no. It was a scandal that I visited in another woman’s home, it was a scandal that I spent her money in my propaganda. The very children on the streets would taunt my children about it. And then, my health broke down from overwork; and the mother was going abroad, and she invited me to go with her and her daughter; and, of course, that made it worse. So at last the old lady came to me. ‘You love my daughter,’ she said, ‘and the world has thrown her into your arms. You must let a divorce be arranged, and then marry my daughter.’”
“And you got the divorce yourself?” asked Thyrsis.
“No,” said Darrell. “There were grounds enough; but it would have meant to attack my wife in the public prints, and I would not do it. I had to let her charge me with desertion, and say nothing.”
“And, of course, they distorted that,” said Thyrsis.
“They distorted everything!” cried the other. “My present wife gave my first wife all her patrimony; and I thought that was generous—I thought it was a proof of love. But the newspapers made it that she had bought me!”