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.