Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1892 — AN ACCIDENTAL MARRIAGE. [ARTICLE]

AN ACCIDENTAL MARRIAGE.

“Be sure you ride with Potts! ” shouted Carrie, after the boat was fairly under way, whereat a little smile rippled across the neighboring passengers’ faces. It was an odd speech, but May and I understood it, for we had talked over matters and things pretty thoroughly beforehand regarding our journey, and this last admonition of Carrie’s was simply to give accent to an oft-repeated charge. We were going to a lovely nook, discovered by Carrie the year before, in the heart of the Catskills. Suffice it to say’that we had to ride many and many a long mile to reach the aforesaid center, and that the line of stages that led to our little nook was owned and rim by two’ stalwart, steadfast men, named Potts and Kramer, Potts was a lively follow, as round and as rosy, and as shiny as a fresh redcheeked apple. Kramer was taller, darker, more taciturn. Potts entertained his passengers with a series of jokes, squibs, anecdotes, legends, mysteries and tales. Kramer attended strictly and solely to the business of driving his four horses. So it was no wonder Carrie screamed out to us: “Be sure you ride with Potts! ” But “woman proposes and man disposes,” as we found out that balmy summer morning, when, on the Catskill Landing, we asked, for the Potts and Kramer line!. “ Here, ladies,” said a tall man, who we know must be Kramer, motioning us to a half-filled stage. Instead of getting in we looked around expectant.

Ah, ye»! there he was, the jolly, roundfaced Jehu, whip in hand, his lips curled up in a pleasant bow, his eyes twinkling already. “We don’t want to ride with you,” Said May, with charming candor, “we want to ride with Mr. Potts, because he talks tne most.” “Ha! ha! ha!” shouted Mr. Potts. “Well, ladies, I appreciate the compliment, I really do, but it’s impossible for me to add another fare. You'll have to ride with Mr. Kramer. He's a jolly fellow. Get him started and lie’ll talk the top off of a meeting house.” Mr. Potts’ argument was irresistible. We meekly got into the half-filled stage and wound our way up over the long hills, with Mr. Kramer sitting bolt upright in front of us, looking neither to the right nor to the left and oblivious of all remarks that might be made behind him. In vain would May lean forward and say in her most winning manner: “I do wonder what that pretty little place is called over there?” or “Which of these peaks do you think is the highest, Sue?” Not a sound came from his lips till, casting aside all subterfuge, she would say: “Mr. Kramer, won’t you tell us?” And then, in briefest monosyllables, would come the answer. At last Mr. Kramer suddenly stopped before a little wayside inn, and landed all our dusty and tired fellow-travellers at their destination. Then we went on our way again—sole occupants of the capacious vehicle. May yawned again and, again. At last she gave a heart-breaking Bigh % and exclaimed: “What a dreadfully dreary ride this is to be sure!” Mr. Kramer turned his head ever so slightly, and looked back at her. Foi once his lips parted of their own accord. He was going to say something without being asked. “Do you see that house over there?” asked he, pointing to a pretty cottage half hidden by clambering vines and surrounded by a mass of brilliant flowers, “that is where I live.” “Ah,” said May,- adjusting her blue glasses more firmly upon her nose, “what a dear, cozy little place—the prettiest one we’ve seen for miles.” As'this was Mr. 'Kramer’s first and only voluntary remark, May seemed disposed to encourage him by sufficient praise. “ Are you married f” she continued, fearful that the generous impetus to speech would dry up forever. “Yes,” Mr. Kramer replied, looking back at us with a curious twinkle in his eye; “I was married sort of accidentally.” “ Dear mel” cried May, with vivacity: “ I am certain from your manner that there was something very odd about youi marriage. Would you mind telling Us

about the—incident, or accident, which ever it was ? ” “If it will pass away the time for you,” Mr. Kramer replied: “I don’t mind telling you how I won my wife. But I have got a boy almost as old as you are, so you see the events I refer to happened quite a while ago.” It would have scarcely surprised us more if the town pump had suddenly commenced a narrative. “ I was born in the little village we passed through, back yonder, and so was Fanny Davis. We went to school together; sat in the same seat in church; rode in the same hay-wagon; skated on the same ice-ponds; went to the same hqsking-bees; but wg didn’t love each other ffiUclTfbr all that. ' “I could not understand or take a joke, and, as Fanny Soften made me a target for her fun, the natural consequence was, we were generally at swords’ points. “I was one of the first country boys who enlisted. There wasn’t a more awk wark boy in the regiment. “ I’ll skip the history of the war, and only say after more than three long years spent in marching and countermarching from battlefield to battlefield, I came back to the village down there, a different man from the one who went away .jf < “ Such a time as they made over the little fragment of our regiment, when we came home all ragged aud weary and worn. Everybody turned out. The folks got up a big reception down in the old church. “They gave us more good things than than we could eat in a month, and made speeches that were a good deal more flowery than our path had been. All the old neighbors and friends crowded around us, and I had all I could do, for a while, shaking hands. I had often dreamed of this home-coming down under those southern stars, and thought < of the old familiar faces that would' brighten when they saw me, and the friends whose hands I would like to take first; but in all my dreams I had never thought of Fanny. “ By-and-by there was a little pause. I looked up, and there, not more than three yards off, with cheeks like roses and eyes like stars, she stood, looking at me with such a look as I never thought she could have for any one, much less for me. “It was so unexpected my heart stood still for a moment. She came forward and seized hold of both my hands and said, in a choked voice:

“ Sam, you are a brave man. lam not worthy to untie your shoe; but I want to take your hand and tell you how I honor you, and how sorry I am for all the unkind things I have done and said in days gone by.’ “You see the war had educated her some, too. “I seemed suddenly to be lifted into a delicious and ratified' atmosphere, impregnated with a divine radiance that ilaround me. All the long years of the war rolled like a flashing panorama before my brain. Commonplace actions that I had before counted only as my duty, grew strangely heroic. I was proud of the bars on my shoulders. I felt every inch a hero. And yet it seemed as if I would rather see her tearfilled eyes look at me in that way than to have all the jmnors the world could aftord.

“That night, when I went to bed, I drenmed of the lights, the music, the flowers, the speeches, but at last everything melted into twb soft, sweet, tearfilled eyes, with, a luminous soul behind them, which said over and over, ‘You are a hero, you are a hero.’ “When I woke the world was all right side up. The war was gone forever, and I had slipped back into my old place as easily as if I had never left it. Outwardly everything was the same; but inwardly, what a change there was 1 “ Of course I went to see Fan r y. No distance would have been too great, no storm too severe, to hinder me. And many a time when I ‘have walked a mile and more, just to touch her little soft hand, or look into her eyes, I would think of the times upon times I had gone almost as far the other way, so that I should not see her. “ I followed Fannyjlike 9 shadow. I asked her to marry *me over and over again. From a taciturn man I grew to, be a great talker. She must have inspired me, I think, for when I was with her, something within me would speak by the hour with an eloquence,and force that I would have been incapable of in ordinary moments. Oh, the plans I made! The pictures I drew of the beautiful future we might have 1 “At first she always said ‘No ’ to my question; not harshly or with ridicule, but just a little soft ‘No, I don’t love you, ’ that seemed as if it was so frail and so slight that I could overcome it if I only persevered. Sometimes, too, she’d, look up to me, when I was pleading, with a sudden, shy glance that, seemed a reflection of the one that had electrified me that night in the old church. “ So things went on for over a year. ■Everybody in the village got to know of our affair, if it could be called by that name, and some said I was a fool to think for a moment that Fanny Davis would have me; and some said she was a fool not to take me, if she could get me. Finally, we had what I thought was the very last quarrel we should ever have. Fanny, worn out by my persistency, had angrily told me never to speak to- her of love again; never evert to come where she was. • Then, for the first time, I think I gave up all hope. I avoided Fanny as she wished me to for a long time, but I couldn't stop thinking of her, fbr all that.

“One day I was walking up the street, thinking for the hundredth time of outcast interview, and trying to be a man again without her. I reasoned it all out; that Fanny ana I were not suited to each other; that even if she would marry me, we should live a cat-and-dog life; for she had a quick temper, I was obliged to acknowledge, and I had an obstinate will. I said over and again that I would conquer the mad, persistent feeling that seemed to rush through my veins, a very part of my blood; that I would put her out of my thoughts forever. “ I was thinking over all these ’ things that day, as I said, and had just given up, and then concluded I could lot give Fannie up, when I saw her oming toward me. I did not even know ,f she would speak to me, but she did—:ust a cool little nod,'as much as to say: •We will be friendly acquaintances, and 10 more.’ At first, I thought I would •ass her, but I deliberately walked back vith her. . “She said nothing after the first greeting, nor did I speak after that, either. The silence was just beginning to get a little awkward when we met Judge lentley going down town, evidently in a hurry; but he stopped a moment, gave inch of us a sharp look through his goldoowed spectacles and said: “ ‘Haven’t been quarrelling again, chilIren, eh? Now, why can’t you be recon•i led and. happy? It’s just as easy to be rood and happy as—the other thing. Let is bury the hatchet on the spot I’ll be he peace-maker.’

“A sudden thought seemed to strikt him, he said t “‘I will tell vou what I’ll do. I’ll marry you out of Land, and then you will be happy forever. “‘Samuel, do you take Fanny to be your wedded wife, to have and to hold forever? Do you promise to be her faithful and affectionate husband til] death patts you?’ “ ‘Yes, that I do,’ cried I, with all my heart. “ ‘Fanny, do you take Samuel to be your wedded husband? Do you promise to be a true and loving wife to him till separated by death?’ “ ‘Perhaps I’ll think about it, judge, said Fanny, with a little of her sauciness. “Then, raisingdiis hands impressively, he sajd: “ ‘I pronounce you man and wife, and let every one hereafter hold his peace.’ “ ‘There, there, children,’ he continued, ‘it’s all done now. I’ll just have time to salute the bride and catch the stage.’ “So he stooged, and before Fanny could protest, kissed her on the forehead and went puffing down the street. “We had almost reached Fanny’s house, and soon I left her there, still subdued, but laughing a little at the judge’s odd joke. “The judge met Mr. Paine, editor of the Saddem Gazette, a little further on, and said: “ ‘Paine, do you want a news item? I’ve only got a minute to give it to you. Sam Kramer and Fanny Davis are married. I tied the knot myself about five minutes ago.’ “Of course, Paine wasn’t going to be such a fool as to miss an item like that. So home he went and wrote up half a column or more on the happy event, at the end congratulating the bride and groom on their safe arrival in the pleasant port of matrimony after a long and stormy courtship. “Well, that upset the town. When I read that item I was so weak I couldn’t stand up. It never had occurred to me, or Fanny, or to the judge, either, I don’t believe, that it was a bona fide marriage; but there it was all down in black and white, and it didn’t look the least bit like a joke. “Of course, everybody I met congratulated me. The more I denied it, the more they believed there was something in it.

“After a day or two things began to look so serious I went to sec Lawyer Searing; he was an old friend of mine and a war comrade, too. I gave him a history of the wHole case, ana asked him what he thought of it. He deliberated a while, and then jumped up and shook my hand, saying: “ ‘lt is my honest opinion, Sam, that Parson Hathaway couldn’t have married you any better than that if he had tried.’ “What did I do? I sat down and put my head in my hands, and groaned. All my hopes were fulfilled. What I had been fighting for with all my strength had come to pass, and I was more unhappy than I had ever been before in my life. You see, I wasn’t thinking of myself at all. I was thinking of Fanny. What, if she should take it hard? I almost knew she would. Of course I should never claim her as my wife unless she chose to come' to me of her own free will. But the fact that we were legally bound to each other stared me in the face, whichever way I looked. “I thought about it all night, and then concluded I must see Fanny and find a way out of the.trouble if possible. “ I found her quiet and self-possessed, but her eyes had a suspicious redness around the rims that showed she had been crying. I plunged right into the subject and said: “ ‘Fanny, I have come to tell you how sorry I am that little joke happened, and how serious it seems to be. Ned Searing says it looks very much like a legal marriage.’ “Fanny’s face grew white as a cloth at this.

“Ah,’ said I to myself, ‘she is going to take it hard, I am afraid,’ and without giving her time to speak, I went on : ‘ God knows, Fanny, if I could have it undone again by giving my right hand >up, I would do,so. I have been ready to marry you any time during the past year, but I never wanted to force you into anything like this. As it is, the ceremony makes no difference to me. I have said a hundred times that if I did not marry yon I would not marry anyone. You are not free to marry anyone else, no matter how much you may wish to. But I have thought and thought over the matter and I have concluded there is a way out of the difficulty. I will go away, and then, after awhile, you can go to some other State and get a divorce from me for desertion. “Long before I had finished Fanny was sobbing as if her heart would break. Said I at; last: .‘ Fanny, won’t you say good-by to me? I may not see you again, as I am going away soon.’ And then, instead of saying good-by and letting me go, -she flew to me and put both arms around my neck, laid her head on my shoulder, and said, between her sobs: ‘I will never let you go; I thought I didn’t love you, Sam, but I do, I do!’ “For a moment I was completely bewildered. I half doubted my sanity, even, for it was hard to realize that the girl who had treated me so coldly when I begged her to take me for her husband, now that I came to renounce her, was clinging to me and saying she -yyould never let me go. “By-and-by we got more composed and sat down to talk matters over, and then it seemed as if we had suddenly changed characters, for Fanny was all meekness and submission, and I was the one who made terms and conditions. “ ‘ If all the lawyers in the State pronounce that a legal marriage,’ said I, at length, ‘ I will never call you my wife till you come to me of your own free will in the old church down yonder, and promise before the dominie and all our friends to be my true and loving wife.’ “And she did. God bless her, she did.”—[New York News.