The Somerset reporter., 1899-02-09
What would the mad gods do
For hate with me, / wonder1
Or what for love with your

"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 s
weeds in the lonely library and gazed
across the sodden, gray garden with
eyes that looked and saw not.
She had been prisoner and now the
shackles had fallen. and behold, she was
free
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 rs these it Is
permitted one to be thankful that all
women do not love their husbands
Mary Charrington was a small WON
an, with slight figure, pale face IA
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 before!
1t is sinful to wish a man dead, sin
full to be glad when he dies, but when
that mans person has constituted
barrier between oneself and all pleasure
in life. if it be sinful to rejoice ut that
barriers removing, then sin such re-
joicing must be, and there an end of
it,
She had married him three years be
fore for diversity of reasons. not for
the only one She put all thought of
that aside. She said Yes 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 man y name WAS Jack Collingwood.
and he was barrister who, being
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 ont hunting after which,
having committed blunder it washed
its hands of the whole affair and said,
What must he shall be
Fate is IA fatallst.
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 ont to
Calcutta between two pages of foreign
paper.
The answer came back-the answer
ehe expected and longed and prayed
for, and Mary Char1ington made her
set her affairs in order
and bought her trousseau, walking in a
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 off the little white
Grape cap and threw it into the air 1t
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 III the kandahar to go
ont to him
She said goodbv to all her friends
She smiled vaguely and irritatinglY at
their slightly stiff congratulations, and
their half yelled hints AS to the some
what indecent haste displayed. when
Percys body was hardly cold in the
tomb according to circumstances
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 ont of
the door. The man forgets--the world
That is the worst of man
and of the world
She had spent four7and twenty years
in sitting by the weary wayside watch
ing for happiness to come along the
road And now happiness had hove in
sight, III distant cloud of glory and
she straightway arose to meet it, with
ont any mock modest delay What did
it natter She was going away from