The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1899-02-21
What would the mad gods do
For hate with me, I wonder 2
Or what for love with youf

80 Percy CharrlngGOn went nome on
a hurdle-all of him that the startled
soul left behind when it set forth on its
separate journey from the bottom of
that pitiless ditch, and Mrs Charming
ton, five days later, sat in her widow 8
weeds in the lonely library and gazed
across the sodden, gray garden with
eyes that looked and saw not.
She had been a prisoner and now the
shackles had fallen, and behold, she was
freel
Two hours before the heavy Essex
clay fell dead and solemnly upon her
husbands coffin; two hours ago she
turned her face from the past and faced
the future-the future that five days
back had never existed for her. Where
fore she sat in her library and was
calmly, steadfastly glad.
In having been wretched for three
years she was spared the great misery
she should rightly have felt at her lone
illness. At moments such as these it is
permitted one to be thankful that all
women do not love their husbands.
Mary Charrington was a small wom-
an, with slight figure, a pale face a
little too long for its width, big gray
eyes and mass of old fashioned nut
brown hair. She was four and twenty,
and she had never been sincerely happy
in the whole of her life.
Who are we to cast stone at her
when we realize that she came nearer
to happiness on the day of her hus-
band funeral than ever before2
1t is sinful to wish man dead, sin
full to be glad when he dies, but when
that mans person has constituted a
barrier between oneself and all pleasure
in life, if it be sinful to rejoice at that
barriers removing, then sin such re-
joicing must be, and there's an end of
It'll
She had married him three years be-
fore for a diversity of reasons, not for
the only one. She put all thought of
that aside She said eyes to Mr.
Charrington because he was young and
good looking and loved her and pro-
posed to her. and because she was lonely
and poor and tired of all her surround
ings and wanted strong arm between
her and the world. Women marry for
that last reason much oftener than they
have any idea Of
Of course directly she was married
she met the man she was to love. and
forthwith loved him, and suffered as
only these little, pale faced. gray eyed
women can. because they have no
strength to rise superior to their love,
nor pride of passion ever to contemplate
cutting the Gordian marriage knot.
The mans name was Jack Collingwood,
and he was a barrister, who, being a
brave man, ran away and went off to
try his luck at the Calcutta bar.
Fate was kind and let him succeed.
Fate wanted to keep him away from
Mrs. Charrington, and then one day
it forgot and let Percy come to IRENE
diable grief out hunting after which,
having committed blunder, it washed
its hands of the whole affair and said,
What must be shall be''
Fate is fatalist.
She wrote to her lover; she told him
she was Free 1t was not long letter,
but the whole of her life and her love
and her hopes of heaven went out to
Calcutta between two pages of foreign
paper
The answer came back-the answer
she expected and longed and prayed
for, and Mary Charrington made her
preparations, set heI affairs in order
and bought her trousseau, walking in q
golden world decked with purple and
rose and silver-a world all fair to see,
that had never before been aught but
gray to her.
She sang about the big, empty house
she laughed whenever she caught her
own eye in one of the many great mir
rors. Once she took of the little white
Grape cap and threw it into the air. II
was very bad taste on her part, but she
was SO happy that she had got beyond
refinement.
So at the end of six months she book
ed her passage in the Kandahar to &c
out to him.
She said goodby to all her friends.
She smiled vaguely and irritatingly al
their slightly stiff congratulations and
their half yelled hints as to the some.
what indecent haste displayed, wher
Percy's body was hardly cold in the
tomb. according to circumstance.
some bodies retain an unnatural warmth
for an extraordinary space of time).
Mary did not care, and that is the
worst of woman. She loves one man
and kicks the rest of the world out OF
the door. The man forgets-the world
remembers. That is the worst of man
and of the world
She had spent four and Twenty years
in sitting by the weary wayside watch
ing for happiness to come along the
road. And now happiness had hove il
sight. in a distant cloud of glory, anG
she straightway arose to meet it, with
out any mock modest delay. What die
it matter? She was going away from
them all for good.
A week before she sailed she received
a letter from Jack Collingwood. 1t wai
longer than the last 1t beat about the
bush a good deal, but it left no doubf
as to its ultimate intention.
When fate makes a mistake, it is APP
to be spitefuL 1t lies low and watches
its opportunity-the opportunity fol
bringing its victim to grief-and the1
it is itself again.
Fate made Mary's lover unfaithful t.
her, and the letter was to break it t.
her as gently as possible that he haC
married another woman-in haste, i
seemed, lest she should come out anC
stop him-and that there was no neces
sity for her to go out to Calcutta
Mary Charrington suffered tortur'
for that one week. At the end of i
she looked facts resolutely in the fac
and realized that, if she had nowher
to go, she had at the same time no
where to stay-nowhere in the world
And out of the world-her dead hus
band would be waiting for her. Tn
passage was taken on the Kandahar
That was the detail which proved he
N,.a% olocc r1occoUo t0 Tn6i,