News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1884-01-31
"Good-by, Bell. Good-by, darling.

"Good-by, Bell. Good-by, darling.
Good-by."
They watched him out of sight. The
little bark was mere eggshell for the
storm to play with one such night.
"He'n never come back no more,
master, said a woman who stood near
the gentleman, and the faces of all about
them said the same.
An hour thence the tempest had burst
over them, such as only one old woman
in all that seaside place could reme1u-
Der having known before. And then Gt
was fifty years or more since the day.
twenty dead bodys had been cast upon
the beach in the morning; bodies of
by the storm.
| There were sad hearts in the town-a
town filed with sea-going folk, nearly
every household of which had some dear
one afoat on the ocean. But every
woman there had thought to spare
from her own sorrows for poor Jack
Marble and the young wife who wept for
him.
She had been proud and held herself
above them; out they forgot that when
they saw her cast down upon the sand in
the gray dawn, all her golden hair about
her face. She had heard the story of
her husbands compact with the stran-
ger, and knew why he had been so ready
to barter his life for gold.
Knew as none there knew that he had
no hope of ever coming back.
Touch that money-not she-never,
though she starved. Nor would she go
back to her luxurious home, where,
doubtless, now she would be welcomed.
There she would die, and they should
bury her in the sea, to float away and
find Jack. All the world was nothing
without him; nothing, she knew that.
Life was worthless without Jack. And
no one gave her any hope. No one
dared.
The wreck had vanished. Bits of her
came in with the tide. Soon it might
bring that which had been Jack to her
feet. All day she watched for it with
maddening eyes, with a horrible soul
rending hope and fear mingling in her
soul. But the sea brought only in the |
dusk little boat. One old man in red |
flannel, with tarpaulin upon his head, |
at the oars. A stranger who came up to |
the men on the beach, and said some
thing to them-something that set them |
all shouting, screaming, cheering, ut
tering Jack Marbles name with odd |
gasps and sobs and before they told her
Bell knew that her husband had been |
saved.
He lay in the fsherman's hut, bufeted
by wave and wind to an infants weak
ness, and she bent over him, her lips to
his, and words were spoken then that
bound their hearts more firmly than they
ever had been bound before.
Jack had not brought the casket, and
would receive nothing from the man
who had sent him forth. Bell urged
him with tears in her eyes to this.
81 would not have it, Jack" she said.
cit is as though could have taken
money fe~ yer.s lfa-"
So with Jacks health the two re-
turned to their old humble life. They
were never happier, Jack often said,
than in these days, though afterward
wealth came to them; for Bells father re-
Tented at death, and made her his heiress.
And Jacks great hope of being owner of
a splendid steamer came to pass, al
though he made but one or two voyages
in her, after all, and those with Bell.
And people who knew how rich they |
were wondered sometimes that Captain
Marbles wife would not be finer. AL
ways neat, she never decked herself as
many women did. She knew why, and
so did Jack, who tried to move her
often, but no one else, unless my reader
guesses how those words which she had |
spoken had haunted her on the night |
through which she wept for Jack as one
dead