Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1899-02-09
THE MAD GODS.
What woald the mad gods do
For hate with me, / wonder ?
Or what for love with Youf

Or what for love with your
-Swinburne
Percy Charrington was carried home
on a hurdle with his neck broken one
stormy afternoon in November,
having lost those who stopped to proffer
assistance the best run Of the season.
People shook their heads and remark
ed that young men from the grass coun-
ties who will try to fly the Essex fences
can only expect broken necks as mat
ter of course. A fence that begins with
small ditch and soft take off, con.
tinues with big built up bank crown
ed by stout staked hazel hedge and is
concluded by nine foot drop into a
chasm like ready made grave on the
far side is not the place to fly, as any
fool should have known and all Essex
people do know.
So Percy Charrington went home 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. Charring-
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
l.
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 small wom-
an, with slight figure, a pale face
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
bands funeral than ever befores
1t is sinful to wish 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 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 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 9
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 ani let Percy come to IRENE
diable grief ont hunting after which,
having committed blunder, it washed
its hands Of the whole affair and said.
'sWhat 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 bstween two pages of foreign
paper.
The answer came back-the answer
she expected and longed and prayed
for, and Mary Char1ington made her
preparations, set he1 affairs in order
and bought her trousseau, walking in
golden world decked with purple and
rose and silver world all fair to see,
that had nayer before been aught but
gray to ber
She sellg 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 in the Kandahar to go
out to him.
She said goodby to all her friends
She smiled vaguely and irritatingly at
their slightly stiff congratulations, and
their half veiled hints as TO the some
! what indecent haste displayed when
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