The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1899-02-15
JUST IN TIME.

theater in this city.
In private life she was known to a linn
tied few as Mrs. John Smith, she having
married when little more than a schoolgirl
a man of that name, who was twice her
own age. Smith had been wealthy SO long
as he was Pble to personally superintend
mis- soap boiling establishment but his for
tune had faded away since his i'll spent
youth had condemned him to pass the bal
ance of his life upon a couch, semipara.
lyzed and stricken with such aches and
pains as made existence only endurable
when his senses were lulled into slumber
by narcotics.
When the business brain which had
raised him from obscurity had driveled
away with the failure of his firm, it had
become necessary for somebody to do some
thing to keep the wolf from the door OF
ever such a modest and unpretending lit
tie cottage as still remained from the
wreck. Then it was that Winifred had
sought to put her charms, hitherto SO
cruelty sacrificed, to profitable purpose,
and her success upon the stage had been
brilliant and rapid.
i LILY u&Gti41 CN1t Co 0oAO y y
although she had to leave the one little
baby girl more than she liked in the care
of nurses there was a gayety and glamour
about stage life which banished thoughts
of the irritable invalid at home. 1t made
her young blood throb and her bright eyes
sparkle with happy excitement. q
As she rose in her profession she was
able to provide Injuries for the whining
wreck of humanity whom she called hus-
band, and for her there was the luxury of
hearing her efforts a~pplauded by thou
sands of admirers every night.
What wonder when isolated admirers
would seek opportunity to whisper in her
ears-those ears so weary with harsh eavil-
ing and complaining-praise of her art,
her eyes, her hair and her voice, that she
would listen to the strange and unfamiliar
tale? What wonder she listened when one,
with deyilish art, spoke of a thing which
she had never known? He called it love.
What wonder that her heart beat faster as
she dreamed of the life he spoke of, of the
bright pictures he painted, wherein this
mysterious ssloye'' filled all the canvas,
and there was no room for sick and quer-
ulous men on couches, and wherein mar
cotics were not needed to bring peace and
rest? What wonder she listened, like a
little child fascinated with a newly told
fairy tale?
The last night of the season he brought
her roses and told her that they were the
living emblems of his love for her. What
would she do with them? Would she cast
such flowers aside to perish, or would she
wear them in her bosom next to her heart?
On the morrow he sailed for Europe,
perhaps never to return He would pass
her cottage carly in the morning, he said.
On the steamship there was a vacant state
room, reserved for him if he should want
it. In the coupe as he drove down to the
dock there would be a acant seat.
If as he passed the steop of that cottage
where she had suffered so much, where
love had never entered, if she sat there
with his roses or with oven one little bud
of them at her breast, he would wait for
her at the corner where he now was part
ing with her, and they would fly together
to another land where love should live
with them forever.
She listened like n whose soul is stirred
by sweetest music. She let her hand lin
ger in his. Hcr other hand held the roses
which were to decide her fate, and the per-
uulG VI liz hOMCl5 GCCl4Co w 0oA4 ~
senses.
She felt his arm creeping around her
slender waist, and with a shudder, she
knew not if it was born of passion or fear,
she suddenly tore herself away and hur-
ried into her home.
There was no sleep for her that night.
Her husband was in n of his most irri-
table hu1nors. Directly she entered the
house<he called for her, and with fretful
peeYishness and petulant remarks he made
himself even more trying than he had
ever been before.
With her mind fully awakened to the
task of tending and soothing him, forget
full for the ome of the associations of
the roses, she put the pretty posy in a
vase of water by the side of the bed. But
when the weary night had passed and the
light of the morn stole into that sick
ROOM, where she had watched until drugs
had mercifully lulled him into slumber,
her heavy eyes fell upon the bunch of
roses, and she remembered all.
She remembered that he was going
away within an hour or two-going away,
perhaps never to return-and again her
life must be such as it had been through
out the lark and dismal hours of the hor-
rible night just passed.
Unless
Disgust and despair were in her heart.
Want of sleep and the vapors of opium had
dulled her sense of right and wrong.
She stole to her wretched husbands
bedside and noiselessly plucked n full
blown rose from the fateful bunch. She
pinned it in her bosom
Laughing a little defiant laugh, she
stole to her room and put her best hat
jauntily upon her pretty curls, shaking
them saucily at her reflection in the look
ing glass.
Noiselessly unbolting and unlocking the
front door she tripped out on to the stoop.
She seemed to breathe the fresh air of free
dom that bright and breezy morning for
the first time in her life.
Again she laughed as she saw a little
cloud of dust far away upon the road, and
she knew he was coming.
lsJust in time!' she murmured.
mamma, mamma! Me wants 90,
mamma, dear!'
The woman turned and saw her little
child, her baby Dorothy, standing in the
doorway, barefooted and clad only in her
little white nightgown.
where is 90 doin, mamma? Won't 90
take Dolly wiz oo?'' hsped the little one.
a dood dirl. Me never ky when
mammals home"
And a cloud of dust along the road came
nearer and nearer still.
"Ohl What a petty flower oo's dot,
.-L Il