The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1895-06-11
LOST REVENGE.

Tho news of his death came upon ner us
q blow. There could be no doubt of that.
She had never anticipated that he would
die so soon, while the ~roscbushes were all
in flower, and The n~ightingales We're awake
in the coppice, and the sun had tho glow
and the shadows the cool reticence pecul-
lar to the earlier days of the summer. She
had never anticipated that he would die at
all while she was alive. 1t seemed SO I'M
likely. Sho was such a delicate slip OF a
snow white maiden, with tho yagueness OF
tho undiscovered country in her great
brown eyes, with the trouble of a tragic
future in the curying lips of her tremulous
rosebud mouth. And no had been so strong
so terribly strong. Tho iron of his great
arms might havo held up a world, she
thought. His voice was the voice of the
ruler. In his eyes a threatening command
dwelt ALWAYS. And now he was dead. She
had Just heard SO, and scarcely any one
knew it yet. His mighty frame was
stretched out in the room below-the gar
den room, where she generally sat at even-
ing; the garden room to which some
times camo as evening fell. But fsho did
not think of that Immediately. That the
world would so on just as usual now all
was SO changed for her did not occur to
her. The man below had been her husband,
and he was dead. She could only think OF
that at first.
How she had hated him!
He had bought her as the wife he desired.
So, surely, he must have oncc loved her.
But he had never shown it. She had feared
him terribly that very first day, when they
went away together from the church, down
the fat, gray road by the almshouses,
where the old women stood bobbing in the
rain, over the village green haunted by
wandering geese, whose feathers were
blown the wrong way by the wind that
stormy day of their marriage. He must
have once desired her. How he had stared
at her in the shadow of the shut carriage,
while tho hoofs of tho horses splashed in
the puddles of tho country road. His eyes
never left her. They were slightly blood
shot and looked excited as they Travelled
over her face, and his full lips moved I'M
der his black mustache. But he said moth
ing.
How she had hated himl
The morning after their wedding she
had tried to escape from him. She slipped
out of tho great Lord Warden hotel at Do
yer in the gray dampness Of the dawn
when ho was sleeping. The sullen sea,
which they were to cross presently, roared
in her ears. and tho sea gulls cried to her
from the foam flecked pebbles of the steep
Nv c,rving beach. The hull Of a steamer
doomed on the ragged horizon, and the rain
drove over the shining asphalt ways. Two
or three sailors hanging about, with peaked
cans drawn down above their wet faces and
hunched shoulders. peered at her as she
crept from the hotel, q grain of humanity
swept by tho whirlwind. How cold it was,
and how dcsolatol In the wind came to
her tho ~stransled whistle of an engine, and
then she knew she was too late. The train
was 1aslling away as she struggled on
AGAINST the TEMPEST. She returned to his
embrace.
How she had hated himl
And they travelled together. The snow
peaks of Switzerland: the green valleys.
where tho chalets rested on the steep slopes,
as if tired md pausing but for a moments;
tbo blue lakes of Italy: tho old. sad cities.
with their streets full of tho echoes of dead
voices: the weary ruins, passively enduring
shrill calling tourists. the VINEYARDS.
where life vas laughter and was song-she
had seen them ali with him. She hated
them all. Even tho fiat reaches of the ven
erablo Nile and the rose gardens of Damas-
Gus were loathsome to her. She had
watched the flame blue line OF Arabs wind
away beneath the flame blue sky. She had
heard the tinkling bells of and
Tho wild chant of tho sailors sweep up from
Tho pallid gray green mimosa bushes. and
she had only sickened and longed to die.
She had only longed to die. And now he