There came two stewards, bearing with them pillows and blankets and
rugs. These articles were disposed to advantage in two steamer chairs.
Then the stewards hurried away; but presently they reappeared, dragging
the limp and dangling forms of the bridal couple from the central part
of Ohio. But oh, my countrymen, what a spectacle! And what a change from
what had been!
The going-away gown was wrinkled, as though worn for a period of time
by one suddenly and sorely stricken in the midst of health. The bride's
once well-coifed hair hung in lank disarray about a face that was the
color of prime old sage cheese--yellow, with a fleck of green here and
there--and in her wan and rolling eye was the hunted look of one who
hears something unpleasant stirring a long way off and fears it is
coming this way.
Side by side the stewards stretched them prone on their chairs and
tucked them in. Her face was turned from him. For some time both of
them lay there without visible signs of life--just two muffled,
misery-stricken heaps. Then, slowly and languidly, the youth stretched
forth an arm from his wrappings and fingered the swaddling folds that
enveloped the form of his beloved.
It may have been he thought it was about time to begin picking the
coverlid, or it may have been the promptings of reawakened romance, once
more feebly astir within his bosom. At any rate, gently and softly, his
hand fell on the rug about where her shoulder ought to be. She still had
life enough left in her to shake it off--and she did. Hurt, he waited
a moment, then caressed her again. "Stop that!" she cried in a low but
venomous tone. "Don't you dare touch me!"
So he touched her no more, but only lay there mute and motionless;
and from his look one might plumb the sorrows of his soul and know how
shocked he was, and how grieved and heartstricken! Love's young dream
was o'er! He had thought she loved him, but now he knew better. Their
marriage had been a terrible mistake and he would give her back her
freedom; he would give it back to her as soon as he was able to sit up.
Thus one interpreted his expression.
On the day we landed, however, they were seen again. We were nosing
northward through a dimpled duckpond of a sea, with the Welsh coast on
one side and Ireland just over the way. People who had not been seen
during the voyage came up to breathe, wearing the air of persons who had
just returned from the valley of the shadow and were mighty glad to be
back; and with those others came our bridal couple.
I inadvertently stumbled on them in an obscure companionway. Their
cheeks again wore the bloom of youth and health, and they were in a
tight clinch; it was indeed a pretty sight. Love had returned on roseate
pinions and the honeymoon had been resumed at the point where postponed
on account of bad weather.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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