The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1904-04-27
LOST REVENGE
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His death came upon her as
blow. There could be no doubt of
that. She had never anticipated
that he would die SO soon. 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
llmshouses, 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 pud-
dies Of the country road. His eyes
never left her. They we're slightly
bloodshot and looked excited as they
travelled over her face, and his full
dips moved under his black mus
1ache, but he said nothing.
How she had hated him! A.
The morning after their wedding
she had tried to escape from him.
She slipped out of the great Lord
Warden hotel at Dover in tho gray
dampness of the dawn when he was
sleeping. The cullen 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 steeply curving beach. The
hull Of q steamer loomed on the rag
ged horizon, and the rain drove over
the shining asphalt 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 en-
brace.
How she had hated him!
And they travelled together. The
snow peaks Of Switzerland, the
green valleys, where the chalets rest
ed on the steep slopes, as if tired
and pausing but for a 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 call
ing tourists; the vineyards, where
life was laughter and was song-she
had seen them all with him. She
hated them all. Even the fiat reach
es of the venerable Nile and the rose
gardens of Damascus were loath-
some to her. And now he lay dead,
and she could hear the nightingales
beginning to flute. Yet was she
glad?
They had come back to England.
People envied her. Women muir
INJURED his name as she passed by,
murmured it in admiration, 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 weariness. In the park,
as her victoria stood against the
railings in the hot sun, and the mur-
mur 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 incognita-
passed her by, she sickened again
and thought of the rose gardens of
Damascus and wondered il 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 dream
ing, and the voices under the trees
! said she posed, because for a mo-
! ment she ceased to think Of them.
a Then she drove home as the twilight
j gathered about the city and tried to
i hush it all, in vain. She dreaded
4 the falling Of nights as children
a dread the grave.
h How she had hated him.
Il And then golden thread twined
h into the web Of her tangled young
life. One, in the midst Of the ig-
b norant and the careless, understood
Athat she was in the prison house of
adespsir end stayed awhile outside
/ the grating Of her cell to whisper