PAGE 6
Bear And Forbear
by
At last the assembly broke up, and she was free to go back again to the home that had not, alas! proved as pleasant a spot to her as her imagination had once pictured it.
“And that it has not been so,” she murmured to herself, “he has not been all to blame.”
On being left at the door, Mrs. Canning rang the bell impatiently. As soon as admitted, she flew up stairs to meet her husband, intending to confess her error, and beg him earnestly to forgive her for having acted so directly in opposition to his wishes. But she did not find him in the chamber. Throwing off her bonnet and shawl, she went down into the parlours, but found all dark there.
“Where is Mr. Canning?” she asked of a servant.
“He went away about ten o’clock, and has not returned yet,” was replied.
This intelligence caused Mrs. Canning to lean hard on the stair-railing for support. She felt in an instant weak almost as an infant.
Without further question, she went back to her chamber, and looked about fearfully on bureaus and tables for a letter addressed to her in her husband’s handwriting. But nothing of this met her eye. Then she sat down to await her husband’s return. But she waited long. Daylight found her an anxious watcher; he was still away.
The anguish of mind experienced during that unhappy night, it would be vain for us to attempt to picture. In the morning, on descending to the parlour, she found on one of the pier-tables a letter bearing her name. She broke the seal tremblingly. It did not contain many words, but they fell upon her heart with an icy coldness.
“MARGARET: Your conduct to-night has decided me to separate myself from a woman who I feel neither truly loves nor respects me. The issue which I have for some time dreaded has come. It is better for us to part than to live in open discord. I shall arrange every thing for your comfortable support, and then leave the city, perhaps for ever. You need not tell our child that her father lives. I would rather she would think him dead than at variance with her mother.
‘JAMES CANNING.'”
These were the words. Their effect was paralyzing. Mrs. Canning had presence of mind enough to crush the fatal letter into her bosom, and strength enough to take her back to her chamber. When there, she sunk powerless upon her bed, and remained throughout the day too weak in both body and mind to rise or think. She could do little else but feel.
Five years from the day of that unhappy separation, we find Mrs. Canning in the unobtrusive home of Aunt Hannah, who took the almost heart-broken wife into the bosom of her own family, after the passage of nearly a year had made her almost hopeless of ever seeing him again. No one knew where he was. Only once did Margaret hear from him, and that was on the third day after he had parted from her, when he appeared in the court-room, and made a most powerful argument in favour of the client whose important case had prevented his going with his wife to the assembly. After that he disappeared, and no one could tell aught of him. A liberal annuity had been settled upon his wife, and the necessary papers to enable her to claim it transmitted to her under a blank envelope.
Five years had changed Margaret sadly. The high-spirited, blooming, happy woman, was now a meek, quiet, pale-faced sufferer. Lilly had grown finely, all unconscious of her mother’s suffering, and was a very beautiful child. She attracted the notice of everyone.
“Aunt Hannah,” said Margaret, one day after this long, long period of suffering, “I have what you will call a strange idea in my mind. It has been visiting me for weeks, and now I feel much inclined to act from its dictates. You know that Mr. and Mrs. Edwards are going to Paris next month. Ever since Mrs. Edwards mentioned it to me, I have felt a desire to go with them. I don’t know why, but so it is. I think it would do me good to go to Paris and spend a few months there. When a young girl, I always had a great desire to see London and Paris; and this desire is again in my mind.”