The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1895-09-05
LOST REVENGE.
'oeoooooooooe ocooooocoee

The news of his death came upon
her as blow. There could be no
doubt of that She had never antici-
pated 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 reticence
peculiar to the earlier days OF the
summer. She had never anticipated
that he would die at all while she
was alive. 1t seemed so unlikely. She
was such a delicate slip OF snow
white maiden, with the vagueness OF
the undiscovered country in her great
brown eyes, with the trouble OF Il
tragic future in the curying lips OF her
tremulous rosebud 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 4 threatening command
dwelt always. And now he was dead.
She had just heard so, and scarcely
anyone knew it, His 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
Immediately. That the world would
60 on just us 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 him terri
bly, that very first day, when they
went away together from the church,
down the fiat, gray road by the aims
houses, where the old women stood
bObbing in the rain, over the village
green haunted by wandering geese,
whose feathers were blown the wrong
way that stormy day of their mar
riage. 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 puddles of the country road. His
eyes never left her. They were slight
ly Dloodshot and looked excited as
they travelled over her face, and his
full lips moved. under his black mus
tache. But he said nothing.
How she had 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 he was sleeping.
The Sullen sea, which they were to
cross presently, roared in her ears,
nd hn nil to ,n,. +Io
folm-fecked pebbles Of the steeply
curving beach. The hull of steamer
doomed on the ragged horizon, and
the rain drove over the shining as
phalt ways. Two or 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 desOlate.
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 paus-
ing but for moment; the blue lakes
of Italy; the DID, sad cities, with their
streets full of 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
rhnC n L,
rose gardens If Damascus were loath-
some 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
mlmOsa bushes, and she had only
slckened and lOnged to die And now
he was dead and she could hear the
nightingales beginning to flute. Yet
she was glad.
They had come back to England.
People envied her. Women murmured
his name as she passed by. muir
INJURED it in admiration, while the
blood famed in her cheeks at the
thought that she was his. The great
world took her for awhile. took her
and gave to her only such profound
WEAKNESS. In the park, as her vic
toria stood against the ratings in the
hot sun, and the murmur of society
rippled around her beneath the trees,
and the queens of society and the
courtesans who were the recognized
queens-the sinner incognita and the
queen incognita-passed her by, she
sickened again and thought of the
flame blue line Of the Arabs, and Won
dered 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 a
moment she ceased to think Of them.
Then she drove home as the twilight