The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-05-06
THE DEAD MAN LAUGHED.

The news OF his death came upon her as
a blow. There could be no doubt Of that
I She had never anticipated that he would
die so soon. while the rose bushes were
all in flower. and the nightingales were
awake in the coppice. and the sun had
the glow and the shadows the cool reti-
I cence peculiar TO the early DAYS Of the
summer. She had never anticipated that
he would die at all while she was alive It
seemed so unlikely. She was such deli
cate slip Of a snow white maiden. with
I the vaEueness OF the undiscovered country
+ In her great brown eyes. with the trouble
I Of tragic future in the curving lips OF
7 her tremulous, rose bud mouth And he
/ had been so strong-so terribly strong
The iron Of his great arms might have
held up a world. she thought His voice
was the voice Of the ruler. In his eyes
| threatening command dwelt always And
now he was dead. She had just heard So
and scarcely any one knew 1t vet His
3 mighty frame was stretched out in the
room below-the garden room. where she
] generally sat at evening; the garden room
{ to which one sometimes came as evening
fell But she did not think Of that i'm
mediately That the world would 70 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 his wife he de-
sired 30, surely, he must have once loved
ner. But ne had never sworn it. She had
/ feared him terribly that very first day.
/ When they went away together from the
/ cnurch, down the fiat, gray road by the
almshouses, where the old women stood
bobbing IN the rain. over the village green
haunted by wandering geese whose feath-
D blown wa hxr Q r~fr,.s
/ that stormy day of their marriage lie
started at her in the shadow of the shut
carriage, while the hoOfs Of the horses
/ splashed in the puddles of the country
] road. His eyes never left her. They were
slightly bloodshot and looked excited as
/ they Travelled over her face, and his fun
/ lips moved under his black mustache.
/ But he said nothing.
How she hated him.
/ The morning after their wedding she had
| tried to escape from him. She slipped out
/ OF the great Lord Warden hotel at Dover
/ IN the gray dampness of the dawn when
! ne was sleeping. The sullen sea, which
\ they were to cross presently, roared in
her ears, and the sea gulls cried to her
from the foam-hecked pebbles of the
/ steeply curving beach. The hull of a
steamer doomed on the ragged horizon,
and the rain drove over the shining as
phalt ways. Two or three sailors hang
| ing about, with peaked caps drawn down
/ above their wet faces and hunched Shout
! ders peered at her as she crept from the
/ hotel, a grain of humanity swept by the
whirwind, How cold it was, and how
/ desolatel In the wind came to her the
/ strangled whistle of an engine. and then
was flashing away as she struggled on
against the tempest. She returned to his
/ embrace.
How she hated him!
And they Travelled together. The snow
| peaks of Switzerland. the green valleys.
where the chalets rested on the steep
| slopes, as IL tired, and pausing but for
moment; the blue lakes of Italy; the old.
sad cities with their streets fun of the
echoes of dead voices the weary ruins,
/ passively enduring shrill-calling tourists;
/ the vineyards, where life was laughter and
/ was song-she had seen them all with him.
I She hated them all. Even the fiat reaches
of the venerable Nile and the rose gar
/ dens or Damascus were loathsome to her.
| She had watched the fiame-blue sky. She
and the wild chant of the sailors sweep
! up from the palltd gray-green mimOsa
bushes, and she had only sickened and
/ longed to die. And now he lay dead. and
/ she could hear the nightingales begin
| ming to flute. Yet, was she glad?
They had come back to England. People
1 enVied her Women murmured his name
as she passed by murmured it in admira-
ton, while the blood famed in her cheek
at thought that she was his. The greay
/ world took her for awhile, took her and
gave to her only such profound WEAKNESS.
! In the park. as her victoria stood against
the ratings in the hot sun, and the muir
muir of society rippled round her beneath
/ the trees, and the queens of society, and
the courtesans, who were the unrecognized
]
! fncognita-passed her by, she slckened
again, and thought of the rose gardens of
Damascus and of the fame-blue of the
| Arabs. and wondered If the world could
! give to her nothing, If his shadow must be
upon everything, like the shadow of fate
/ brooding black over the pleasaunce of life
| She wondered in a malady of dreaming
/ and the voices under the trees said she
/ posed, because for moment she ceased
! to think of them. Then she drove home
/ as the twilight gathered about the city,
| and tried to hush it all, in vain. She
/ dreaded the falling of night as children
/ dread the grave.
| How she had hated him.
And then a golden thread twined into
/ the web of her tangled young life. One,
/ in the midst of the ignorant and the care
/ less, understood that she was in the
prison house of despair, and stayed awhile
/ outside the grating of her cell TO whisper
| of comfort The dew fell upon the poor
/ parched flower, and she opened her petals
/ to receive II. But so secretly. always so Sc
| cretly. Surely no one ever knew Outside
! the garden-room in the dusk he came
| when all was quiet. The jailer was away.
He came and came again, and he taught
her to see, the stars through the grating
! of her cell, and he told her of the rising
of the moon. And when he came, it seem
/ ed to her that the nightingales We're al
ways singing.
And now the jailer had gone away for
| ever The prison doors were open. She
lay in silence. She thought only Of him.
| Her small face was very white as she
walked softly down the stairs. She
! gold-dust that the sun shone obliquely
| through the loaded lattices of the hall.
! and she turned her eyes away from them
and wished the sun would go down. With
| the darkness, her strange constraint of
/ calm might fade away. She longed to feel
more natural. She passed through the
1 door very quietly, and closed 1t behind
/ her. and locked 1t. He had been laid
/ upon the wide couch where she sat some
/ times at eventide alone. A white COW
ering shrouded the great form that her
! girls flesh had shuddered at, had shrunk
/ from so often. ray of dying light glinted
where the head was. When she drew
I back the covering, the ray shone upon
! the gray swollen face, into which she
/ gazed for a long while. The upper lip
/ was drawn back from the strong white
/ teeth The mouth seemed to grin callously.
/ She could fancy that the flown soul of the
| dead man was laughing somewhere far
| off, and that the body which, in life had
| so often obeyed the spirit with the weak
! ness of custom still mechanically bowed
/ to its will still revealed outwardly that
| which was no longer prisoned within it,
1 stepped out into the starlight and the
\ moonlight. He lay dead in the room be-
| low her She had not seen him dead; she
must go down into the silent place.