Chapter 3

"And I am sure I love you better than I did, if that were possible," returned Margaret, looking into her husband's face with a glance of deep affection.

As the babe grew older the parent's love for it continued to increase, and, with this increase, their happiness. The chord which had several times jarred harshly between them, slept in profound peace.

But, after this sweet calm, the surface of their feelings became again ruffled. One little incongruity of character after another showed itself in both, and there was no genuine spirit of forbearance in either of them to meet and neutralize any sudden effervescence of the mind. Lilly was not a year old, before they had a serious misunderstanding that made them both unhappy for weeks. It had its origin in a mere trifle, as such things usually have. They had been taking tea and spending an evening with a friend, a widow lady, for whom Mrs. Canning had a particular friendship. As there was no gentleman present during the evening, the time passed rather heavily to Canning, who could not get interested in the conversation of the two ladies. Toward nine o'clock he began to feel restless and impatient, and to wonder if his wife would not soon be thinking about going home. But the time passed wearily until ten o'clock, and still the conversation between the two ladies was continued with undiminished interest, and, to all appearance, was likely to continue until midnight.

Canning at length became so restless and wearied that he said, thinking that his wife did not probably know how late it was,--

"Come, Margaret, isn't it 'most time to go home?"

Mrs. Canning merely looked into her husband's face, but made no answer.

More earnestly than ever the ladies now appeared to enter upon the various themes for conversation that presented themselves, all of which were very frivolous to the mind of Canning, who was exceedingly chafed by his wife's indifference to his suggestion about going home. He determined, however, to say no more if she sat all night. Toward eleven o'clock she made a movement to depart, and after lingering in the parlor before she went up stairs to put on her things, and in the chamber after her things were on, and on the stairs, in the passage, and at the door, she finally took the arm of her husband and started for home. Not a word was uttered by either until they had walked the distance of two squares, when Margaret, unable to keep back what she wanted to say any longer, spoke thus,--

"James, I will thank you, another time, when we are spending an evening out, not to suggest as publicly as you did to-night that it is time to go home. It's very bad manners, let me tell you, in the first place; and in the second place, I don't like it at all. I do not wish people to think that I have to come and go just at your beck or nod. I was about starting when you spoke to me, but sat an hour longer just on purpose."

The mind of Canning, already fretted, was set on fire by this.

"You did?" he said.

"Yes, I did. And I can tell you, once for all, that I wish this to be the last time you speak to me as you did to-night."

It was as much as the impatient spirit of Canning could do to keep from replying--

"It's the last time I will ever speak to you at all," and then leaving her in the street, with the intention of never seeing her again. But suddenly he thought of Lilly, and the presence of the child in his mind kept back the mad words from his lips. Not one syllable did he utter during their walk home, although his wife said much to irritate rather than soothe him. Nor did a sentence pass his lips that night.

At the breakfast table on the next morning, the husband and wife were coldly polite to each other. When the meal was completed, Canning retired to his office, and his wife sought her chamber to weep. The latter half repented of what she had done, but her contrition was not hearty enough to prompt to a confession of her fault. The fact that she considered her husband to blame, stood in the way of this.

Reserve and coldness marked the intercourse of the unhappy couple for several weeks; and then the clouds began to break, and there were occasional glimpses of sunshine.

But, before there was a clear sky, some trifling occurrence put them again at variance. From this time, unhappily, one circumstance after another transpired to fret them with each other, and to separate, rather than unite them. Daily, Canning grew more cold and reserved, and his wife met him in a like uncompromising spirit. Even their lovely child--their darling blue-eyed Lilly--with her sweet little voice and smiling face, could not soften their hearts toward each other.

To add fuel to this rapidly enkindling fire of discord, was the fact that Mrs. Canning was on particularly intimate terms with the wife of a man toward whom her husband entertained a settled and well-grounded dislike, and visited her more frequently than she did any one of her friends. He did not interfere with her in the matter, but it annoyed him to hear her speak, occasionally, of meeting Mr. Richards at his house, and repeating the polite language he used to her, when he detested the character of Richards, and had not spoken to him for more than a year.

One day Mrs. Canning expressed a wish to go in the evening to a party.

"It will be impossible for me to go to-night, or, indeed, this week," Canning said. "I am engaged in a very important case, which will come up for trial on Friday, and it will take all my time properly to prepare for it. I shall be engaged every evening, and perhaps late every night."

Mrs. Canning looked disappointed, and said she thought he might spare her one evening.

"You know I would do so, Margaret, with pleasure," he replied, "but the case is one involving too much to be endangered by any consideration. Next week we will go to a party."

When Canning came home to tea, he found his wife dressed to go out.

"I'm going to the party, for all you can't go with me," said she.

"Indeed! With whom are you going?"

"Mrs. Richards came in to see me after dinner, when I told her how much disappointed I was about not being able to go to the party to-night. She said that she and her husband were going, and that it would give them great pleasure to call for me. Am I not fortunate?"

"But you are not going with Mr. and Mrs. Richards?"

"Indeed I am! Why not?"

"Margaret! You must not go."

"Must not, indeed! You speak in quite a tone of authority, Mr. Canning;" and the wife drew herself up haughtily.

"Authority, or no authority, Margaret"--Canning now spoke calmly, but his lips were pale--"I will never consent that my wife shall be seen in a public assembly with Richards. You know my opinion of the man."

"I know you are prejudiced against him, though I believe unjustly."

"Madness!" exclaimed Canning, thrown off his guard. "And this from you?"

"I don't see that you have any cause for getting into a passion, Mr. Canning," said his wife, with provoking coolness. "And, I must say, that you interfere with my freedom rather more than a husband has any right to do. But, to cut this matter short, let me tell you, once for all, that I am going to the assembly to-night with Mr. and Mrs. Richards. Having promised to do so, I mean to keep my promise."

"Margaret, I positively forbid your going!" said Canning, in much excitement.

"I deny your right to command me! In consenting to become your wife, I did not make myself your slave; although it is clear from this, and other things that have occurred since our marriage, that you consider me as occupying that position."

"Then it is your intention to go with this man?" said Canning, again speaking in a calm but deep voice.

"Certainly it is."

"Very well. I will not make any threat of what I will do, Margaret. But this I can assure you, that lightly as you may think of this matter, if persevered in, it will cause you more sorrow than you have ever known. Go! Go against my wish--against my command, if you will have it so--and when you feel the consequence, lay the blame upon no one but yourself. And now let me say to you, Margaret, that your conduct as a wife has tended rather to estrange your husband's heart from you than to win his love. I say this now, because I may not have--"

"James! It is folly for you to talk to me after that fashion," exclaimed Margaret, breaking in upon him. "I--"

But before she could finish the sentence, Canning had left the room, closing the door hard after him.

Just an hour from this time, Mr. and Mrs. Richards called in their carriage for Mrs. Canning, who went with them to the assembly. An hour was a long period for reflection, and ought to have afforded sufficient time for the wife of Canning to come to a wiser determination than that from which she acted.

Not half a dozen revolutions of the carriage wheels had been made, however, before Margaret repented of what she had done. But it was now too late. The pleasure of the entertainment passed before her, but it found no response in her breast. She saw little but the pale, compressed lip and knit brow of her husband, and heard little but his word of disapproval. Oh! how she did long for the confused pageant that was moving before her, and the discordant mingling of voices and instruments, to pass away, that she might return and tell him that she repented of all that she had done.

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."

"I would go, then," said Aunt Hannah, who thought favourably of any thing likely to divert the mind of her niece from the brooding melancholy in which it was shrouded.

To Paris Mrs. Canning went, accompanied by her little daughter, who was the favourite of every one on board the steamer in which they sailed. In this gray city, however, she did not attain as much relief of mind as she had anticipated. She found it almost impossible to take interest in any thing, and soon began to long for the time to come when she could go back to the home and heart of her good Aunt Hannah. The greatest pleasure she took was in going with Lilly to the Gardens of the Tuileries, and amid the crowd there to feel alone with nature in some of her most beautiful aspects. Lilly was always delighted to get there, and never failed to bring something in her pocket for the pure white swans that floated so gracefully in the marble basin into which the water dashed cool and sparkling from beautiful fountains.

One day, while the child was playing at a short distance from her mother, a man seated beside a bronze statue, over which drooped a large orange tree, fixed his eyes upon her admiringly, as hundreds of others had done. Presently she came up and stood close to him, looking up into the face of the statue. The man said something to her in French, but Lilly only smiled and shook her head.

"What is your name, dear?" he then said in English.

"Lilly," replied the child.

A quick change passed over the man's face. With much more interest in his voice, he said--

"Where do you live? In London?"

"Oh no, sir; I live in America."

"What is your name besides Lilly?"

"Lilly Canning, sir."

The man now became strongly agitated. But he contended vigorously with his feelings.

"Where is your mother, dear?" he asked, taking her hand as he spoke, and gently pressing it between his own.

"She is here, sir," returned Lilly, looking inquiringly into the man's face.

"Here!"

"Yes, sir. We come here every day."

"Where is your mother now?"

"Just on the other side of the fountain. You can't see her for the lime-tree."

"Is your father here, also?" continued the man.

"No, I don't know where my father is." "Is he dead?" "No, sir; mother says he is not dead, and that she hopes he will come home soon. Oh! I wish he would come home. We would all love him so!"

The man rose up quickly, and turning from the child, walked hurriedly away. Lilly looked after him for a moment or two, and then ran back to her mother.

On the next day Lilly saw the same man sitting under the bronze statue. He beckoned to her, and she went to him.

"How long have you been in Paris, dear?" he asked.

"A good many weeks," she replied.

"Are you going to stay much longer?"

"I don't know. But mother wants to go home."

"Do you like to live in Paris?"

"No, sir. I would rather live at home with mother and Aunt Hannah."

"You live with Aunt Hannah, then?"

"Yes, sir. Do you know Aunt Hannah?" and the child looked up wonderingly into the man's face.

"I used to know her," he replied.

Just then Lilly heard her mother calling her, and she started and ran away in the direction from which the voice came. The man's face grew slightly pale, and he was evidently much agitated. As he had done on the evening previous, he rose up hastily and walked away. But in a short time he returned, and appeared to be carefully looking about for some one. At length he caught sight of Lilly's mother. She was sitting with her eyes upon the ground, the child leaning upon her, and looking into her face, which he saw was thin and pale, and overspread with a hue of sadness. Only for a few moments did he thus gaze upon her, and then he turned and walked hurriedly from the garden.

Mrs. Canning sat alone with her child that evening, in the handsomely-furnished apartments she had hired on arriving in Paris.

"He told you that he knew Aunt Hannah?" she said, rousing up from a state of deep thought.

"Yes, ma. He said he used to know her."

"I wonder"--

A servant opened the door, and said that a gentleman wished to see Mrs. Canning.

"Tell him to walk in," the mother of Lilly had just power to say. In breathless suspense she waited for the space of a few seconds, when the man who had spoken to Lilly in the Gardens of the Tuileries entered and closed the door after him.

Mrs. Canning raised her eyes to his face. It was her husband! She did not cry out nor spring forward. She had not the power to do either.

"That's him now, mother!" exclaimed Lilly.

"It's your father!" said Mrs. Canning, in a deeply breathed whisper.

The child sprung toward him with a quick bound and was instantly clasped in his arms.

"Lilly, dear Lilly!" he sobbed, pressing his lips upon her brow and cheeks. "Yes! I am your father!"

The wife and mother sat motionless and tearless with her eyes fixed upon the face of her husband. After a few passionate embraces, Canning drew the child's arms from about his neck, and setting her down upon the floor, advanced slowly toward his wife. Her eyes were still tearless, but large drops were rolling over his face.

"Margaret!" he said, uttering her name with great tenderness.

He was by her side in time to receive her upon his bosom, as she sunk forward in a wild passion of tears.

All was reconciled. The desolate hearts were again peopled with living affections. The arid waste smiled in greenness and beauty.

In their old home, bound by threefold cords of love, they now think only of the past as a severe lesson by which they have been taught the heavenly virtue of forbearance. Five years of intense suffering changed them both, and left marks that after years can never efface. But selfish impatience and pride were all subdued, and their hearts melted into each other, until they became almost like one heart. Those who meet them now, and observe the deep, but unobtrusive affection with which they regard each other, would never imagine, did they not know their previous history, that love, during one period of that married life, had been so long and so totally eclipsed.

THE SOCIAL SERPENT.

A LADY, whom we will call Mrs. Harding, touched with the destitute condition of a poor, sick widow, who had three small children, determined, from an impulse of true humanity, to awaken, if possible, in the minds of some friends and neighbours, an interest in her favour. She made a few calls, one morning, with this end in view, and was gratified to find that her appeal made a favourable impression. The first lady whom she saw, a Mrs. Miller, promised to select from her own and children's wardrobe a number of cast-off garments for the widow, and to aid her in other respects, at the same time asking Mrs. Harding to call in on the next day, when she would be able to let her know what she could do.

Pleased with her reception, and encouraged to seek further aid for the widow, Mrs. Harding withdrew and took her way to the house of another acquaintance. Scarcely had she left, when a lady, named Little, dropped in to see Mrs. Miller. To her the latter said, soon after her entrance:

"I've been very much interested in the case of a poor widow this morning. She is sick, with three little children dependent on her, and destitute of almost every thing. Mrs. Harding was telling me about it."

"Mrs. Harding!" The visitor's countenance changed, and she looked unutterable things. "I wonder!" she added, in well assumed surprise, and then was silent.

"What's the matter with Mrs. Harding?" asked Mrs. Miller.

"I should think," said Mrs. Little, "that she was in nice business, running around, gossiping about indigent widows, when some of her own relatives are so poor they can hardly keep soul and body together."

"Is this really so?" asked Mrs. Miller.

"Certainly it is. I had it from my chambermaid, whose sister is cook next door to where a cousin of Mrs. Harding's lives, and she says they are, one half of their time, she really believes, in a starving condition."

"But does Mrs. Harding know this?"

"She ought to know it, for she goes there sometimes, I hear."

"She didn't come merely to gossip about the poor widow," said Mrs. Miller. "Her errand was to obtain something to relieve her necessities."

"Did you give her any thing?" asked Mrs. Little.

"No; but I told her to call and see me to-morrow, when I would have something for her."

"Do you want to know my opinion of this matter?" said Mrs. Little, drawing herself up, and assuming a very important air.

"What is your opinion?"

"Why, that there is no poor widow in the case at all."

"Mrs. Little!"

"You needn't look surprised. I'm in earnest. I never had much faith in Mrs. Harding, at the best."

"I _am_ surprised. If there was no poor widow in the case, what did she want with charity?"

"She has poor relations of her own, for whom, I suppose, she's ashamed to beg. So you see my meaning now."

"You surely wrong her."

"Don't believe a word of it. At any rate, take my advice, and be the almoner of your own bounty. When Mrs. Harding comes again, ask her the name of this poor widow, and where she resides. If she gives you a name and residence, go and see for yourself."

"I will act on your suggestion," said Mrs. Miller. "Though I can hardly make up my mind to think so meanly of Mrs. Harding; still, from the impression your words produce, I deem it only prudent to be, as you term it, the almoner of my own bounty."

The next lady upon whom Mrs. Harding called, was a Mrs. Johns, and in her mind she succeeded in also awakening an interest for the poor widow.

"Call and see me to-morrow," said Mrs. Johns, "and I'll have something for you."

Not long after Mrs. Harding's departure, Mrs. Little called, in her round of gossipping visits, and to her Mrs. Johns mentioned the case of the poor widow, that matter being, for the time, uppermost in her thoughts.

"Mrs. Harding's poor widow, I suppose," said Mrs. Little, in a half-sneering, half-malicious tone of voice.

Mrs. Johns looked surprised, as a matter of course.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing, much. Only I've heard of this destitute widow before."

"You have?"

"Yes, and between ourselves,"--the voice of Mrs. Little became low and confidential--"it's the opinion of Mrs. Miller and myself, that there is no poor widow in the case."

"Mrs. Little! You astonish me! No poor widow in the case! I can't understand this. Mrs. Harding was very clear in her statement. She described the widow's condition, and very much excited my sympathies. What object can she have in view?"