"I was about calling to see you," said the latter, "on the subject of this unhappy difficulty, to which, so reluctantly to yourself, you have become a party. It may be that I am something to blame. Perhaps I have been too exacting—too jealous of my prerogative as a husband. At any rate, I am willing to admit that such has been the case; and willing to yield something to the morbid feelings of my wife. What is her present state of mind?"
Mr. Edmondson looked surprised.
Remarking this, Lane said quickly, "Is she not at your house?"
"No," replied Mr. Edmondson, "she left us yesterday. We believed that she had gone home. My wife had a long conversation with her, in which she urged her, by every consideration, to return; and we had reason to think, when she left our house, that she went back to you."
"Such is not the case," said Mr. Lane, with disappointment, and something of sadness in his tone. "I have not seen her since the morning of our unhappy difference. Where can she have gone?"
Mr. Edmondson was silent.
"Did she say that she was going to return home?" asked Mr. Lane.
"No. But we had reason to think that such was her intention. Have you heard nothing from her?"
"Not a word."
"It is strange!"
Mr. Lane heaved a deep sigh. A few more brief questions and answers passed, and then the two men separated. The forsaken husband went home with a sadder heart than he had yet known. The absence of his wife and child for several days—both objects of real affection—and absent under such peculiar and trying circumstances, had subdued, to a great extent, his angry feelings. He was prepared to yield much. He would even have gone to his wife, and acknowledged that he was partly in error, in order to have brought about a reconciliation. Something that she had said during their last, exciting interview, which he had rejected as untrue, or not causes of complaint, had represented themselves to his mind; and in the sober reflecting states that were predominant, he saw that he had not in all things treated her as an equal, nor regarded her at all times as possessing a rational freedom as independent as his own. Though he did not excuse her conduct, he yet thought of it less angrily than at first, and was willing to yield something in order to restore the old relations.
Anxiety and alarm now took possession of his mind. The distance between them had become wider, and the prospect of a reconciliation more remote. Amanda had gone, he could not tell whither. She had neither money nor friends; he knew not into what danger she might fall, nor what suffering she might encounter. It was plain from the manner of her leaving the house of Mr. Edmondson, that her resolution to remain away from him was fixed. He must, therefore, seek her out, and invite her to return. He must yield if he would reconcile this sad difficulty. And he was now willing to do so. But, where was she? Whither should he go in search of the wanderer?
The very means which her friend had taken to induce Mrs. Lane to return to her husband, had driven her farther away. The hint touching her husband's legal rights in the child, and his resolution to assert them, filled her with the deepest alarm, and determined her to put it beyond his power, if possible, to deprive her of the only thing in life to which her heart could now cling. Toward her husband, her feelings were those of an oppressed one for an oppressor. From the beginning, he had almost suffocated her own life by his pressure upon her freedom of will. She remembered, with, tears, his tenderness and his love; but soon would come the recollection of his constant interference in matters peculiarly her own; his evident contempt for her intellect; and his final efforts to subdue her rising independence, and make her little less than a domestic slave—and the fountain of her tears would become dry. Added to all this, was the fact of his resolution to recover his child by law. This crushed out all hope from her heart. He had no affection left for her. His love had changed to hate. He had assumed toward her the attitude of a persecutor. Nothing was now left for her but self-protection.
In leaving the home of her husband, Mrs. Lane had exercised no forethought. She made no estimate of consequences, and provided for no future contingencies. She was blind in her faint-heartedness, that was little less than despair. Any thing was better than to remain in a state of submission, that had become, she felt, intolerable. Leaving thus, Mrs. Lane had taken with her nothing beyond a few dollars in her purse, and it was only an accident that her purse was in her pocket. All her own clothes and those of her child, except what they had on, were left behind.
Alarmed at the threat of her husband, Mrs. Lane, a few hours after the conversation with Mrs. Edmondson, in which his views were made known to her, took her child and went away. In parting with her friend, she left upon her mind the impression that she was going home. This was very far from her intention. Her purpose was to leave New York, the city of her residence, as quickly as possible, and flee to some obscure village, where she would remain hidden from her husband. She had resided, some years before, for a short time in Philadelphia; and thither she resolved to go, and from thence reach some point in the country. On leaving the house of her friend, Mrs. Lane hurried to the river and took passage in the afternoon line for Philadelphia.
As the cars began their swift movement from Jersey City, a feeling of inexpressible sadness came over her, and she began to realize more distinctly than she had yet done, her desolate, destitute, and helpless condition. After paying her passage, she had only two dollars left in her purse; and, without money, how was she to gain friends and shelter in a strange city? To add to her unhappy feelings, her child commenced asking for her father.
"Where is papa?" she would repeat every few minutes. "I want to go to my papa."
This was continued until it ended in fretfulness and complaints at the separation it was enduring. Tears and sobs followed; and, finally, the child wept herself to sleep.
A new train of feelings was awakened by this incident. In leaving her husband, Mrs. Lane had thought only of herself. She had not once considered the effect of a separation from its father upon her child. Little Mary's heart was full of affection for the two beings whom nature prompted her to love. Her father's return from business had always been to her the happiest event of the day; and, when she sprang into his arms, her whole being would thrill with delight. Days had passed since she had seen her father, and she was pining to meet him again to lay her head upon his bosom—to feel his arms clasped tightly around her.
All this was realized by the mother, as the child lay sleeping on her arm, while the swift rolling cars bore them farther and farther away from the home she was leaving. Is it just to the child? Distinctly did this thought present itself in her mind. For a long time she mused over it, her feelings all the while growing more and more tender, until something like repentance for the step she had taken found its way into her mind—not for what she was herself suffering, but for the sake of her child. She had not thought of the effect upon little Mary, until the pain of absence showed itself in complaint.
This idea arose clearly before her—she could not push it aside; and, the more she pondered it, the more troubled did she become, from a new source. Would not the separation so deeply afflict the child as to rob her of all happiness?
While these thoughts had full possession of the mother's mind, Mary slept on and dreamed of her father, as was evident from the fact that, more than once, she murmured his name.
When night came down, its effect upon Mrs. Lane was more sadly depressing, for it brought her into a clearer realization of her unhappy condition. Where was she going? What was the uncertain future to bring forth? All was as dark as the night that had closed around her.
At length the cars reached Bristol, and it became necessary to leave them, and pass into the boat. In lifting Mary in her arms, to bear her from the cars, the child again murmured the name of her father, which so affected Mrs. Lane, that her tears gushed forth in spite of her efforts to restrain them. Letting her veil fall over her face to conceal this evidence of affliction from her fellow-passengers, she proceeded with the rest; and, in a little while, was gliding swiftly down the river. It was ten o'clock when they arrived in Philadelphia. For an hour previous to this time,