“Too late,” said a bystander.
“That’s a damn shame,” said a sailor, who had witnessed the whole tragedy.
Hulda was so overwhelmed by the turn of events that when she saw her true beloved return she ran to him, clasped him about the neck and then fainted. The young man naturally looked embarrassed, but he, with others, assisted her to regain consciousness. The bridegroom adopted a martyr-like pose, and when the girl had recovered sufficiently to sit in a chair he addressed the interpreter as follows:
“Tell that crazy gurl that it is a very ondutiful wife she is after makin’ herself. Tell her that from now until the ind of me life she must cut all feelin’s of love from her heart for that man or any other man. Tell her that I have houses in three cities and property in Panama. Tell her that my income is $3,000 gold a year, besides what I make by me lectures. Tell her that I neither drink, smoke nor chew. An’, thin, in the name of Hivin! what more does she want? Tell her I’ll take her to Colon to-morrow, there be a ship sailin’.”
This was related to the bewildered girl, and she was requested to go with her husband.
“Be jabbers, ’tis a policeman that I’ll be after gittin’ to watch her to-night,” he said to himself as he half led, half pulled her to a coach. “If I don’t, ’tis elope she will with that blaguard Southern gintleman. An’, after me spindin’ so much money upon her, an’ ’tis ashamed I’d be to show me face on the Zone if I didn’t take the colleen back with me.”
After much discussion and interpreting, Hulda was prevailed upon to accompany her husband to a hotel. Here people were paid to watch her, while the bridegroom went to dispatch a telegram to the steamship agency, which read: “reserve bridal soute on ship sailing to-morrow for Colon.”
When Hulda was taken on board the next day she had been outwardly appeased by a present from her husband of a diamond ring and $100 in bright gold pieces, but a fire of hatred, fed by a vanquished purpose, smoldered in her breast.
THE CANAL ZONE ARCHITECT’S WEDDING.
(PART III.)
