The Portland daily press., 1895-06-22
LOST REVENGE.

The news of his death came upon her al
blow. There could be no doubt of that
She had never anticipated that he would
die so soon, while the rosebushes were al
in flower and the nightingales were awake
in the coppioe, and the sun had the glow
and the shadows the cool reticence pecul
lar to the earlier days Of the summer She
had never anticipated that he would die al
all while she was alive. 1t seemed SO un
likely. She was such delicate slip of 6
snow white maiden, with the vagueness Of
the undiscovered country in her great
brown eyes, with tho trouble of tragic
future in the curving lips of her tremulous
rosebud mouth. And he had been 80 STRONG
so terribly strong. The iron of his great
arms might have held up q 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 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 one some
times came as evening fell. But she did
not think of that Immediately. That the
world would go 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 once loved her.
But he had never shown it. She had feared
farr blv hot 1i1ct dow tbox,
went away together from the church, 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 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 the hoofs of the horses splashed in
the puddlc5 OF the 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 inustache. But he said moth
ing
How she had hated himI
The morning after their wedding she
had tried to escape from him. She slipped
out of the great Lord Warden hotel at Do
yer in the gray dampness of the dawn
when he 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 fecked pebbles of the steep
ly curving beach. The hull of steamer
doomed on the ragged horizon, and the rain
drove over the shining asphalt ways. Two
OF three sailors hanging about, with peaked
caps drawn down above their wet faces and
hunched shoulders, peered at her as she
crept from the hotel grain of humanity
swept by the whirlwind. How cold it was.
and how desolatei In the wind came to
her the strangled whistle of an engine, and
then she knew she was too late. The train
was flashing away as she struggled on
against the tempest. She returned to his
embrace
How she had hated him!
And they travelled together. The snow
peaks of Switzerland; the green valleys,
where the chalets rested ON the steep slopes,
as if tired and pausing but for moment;
the blue lakes of Italy; the old, sad cities,
with their streets full 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. She hated
them all. Even the fiat reaches of the ven.
cradle 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 fame blue sky. She had
heard the tinkling bells of caravans and
the wild chant of the sailors sweep up from
the pallid gray green miinosa bushes and
she had only sickened and longed to die.
She had only longed to die. And now he
lay dead and she could hear the nightin-
gales beginning to flute Yet was she
glad?
They had come back to England. PEG
pie envied her. Women murmured his
name as shepassed by, murmured 1T in ad-
miration, while the blood famed in her
cheek at thought that she was his. The
great world took her for awhile, took her
and gave to her only such profound weari-
ness. In the park, as her victoria stood
against the ratings in the hot sun, and the
murmnr Of society rippled round her be-
meath the trees, and the queens of society
and the courtesans who were the recognized
queens-the sinner incognita and the
queen ncognita-passed her by, she sick
ened again and thought of the rose gar
dens OF Damascus and of the flame blue
line 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 breeding black over the
pleasaunce of life. She wondered in q
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 d 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 sstaid awhile outside
the grating OF her: cell to whisper of com
font Tho dayy fall 1yfio5, %I,a