Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1893 — THE LOST BRIDE. [ARTICLE]

THE LOST BRIDE.

BY MATT LAMAR.

TTtere was a great crowd in the hall. Everybody -was talking in a high key, and the orchestra iu the hack parlor was fairly convulsing itself in the throes of a pot-pourri. At the tep of the stairs was the bride. She was a symphony iu lavender. She was not a conventional girl, perhaps, but in the matter of wedding garments she had felt bound to follow precede it, and she looked so irresistibly charming that nobody who saw her could believe for the moment that a ‘‘going away’’ gown should be anything but lavender. They made way for her on the stairs, and for the groom, with a tan-colored overcoat on his arm. behind her. The women began kissing the bride, who submitted with flushed cheeks and daucing eyes. One or two elderly men near the dourcame in for a kiss, too. The groom was shaking hands with everybody, the young men all yelling “Good-by, old fellow,’’ as if the groom were GO instead of 24. For a time it was almost impotsible to get the front door open in the crush; and when at last they got the couple out on the steps twenty handfuls of rice bailed upon the retreating figures. A fresh chorus of giggling and shouts of “Goodby.” and the coach door slammed and the Wattcrson wedding had begun to be a matter of histoiy. They reached the station at 10:45. In fifteen minutes they were rolling away in a drawing-room car. The bride could still feel the sting of the rice on her neck —a very pretty neck, encircled by a narrow ribbon of lavender velvet. ’When the groom took off his silk bat several white grains fell to the floor, and the groom covertly scanned the cars to see whether the tell-tale sign had been detected.

Charming innoceucc! As if rice grains j were required to advertise the obviously | just-married condition of this radiant j pair! of the car had been made up as a sleeper, and only three human beings were visible in unmade-up sections. These charitably feigned to regard the new passengers as in no wise exceptional, and did not appear to be taking very much notice of them. When the train conductor and after him the Pullman conductor had been around to collect the tickets, and the groom had for the first time performed that interesting fuuction of introducing to the world, as it were, himself and wife, the pair tried to settle hack in the soft scat and appear indifferent. But the bride had 300 things she wished to say and so they got to talking in a low tone, until presently the white jacketed porter came along. The sight of this functionary startled the groom in an inexplicable way. “Make up the section, sir?” said the porter, with what might be called an invisible grin. “N—no,” said the groom, trying not to appear startled, “we are only going as far as Pittston.” The porter looked for a moment as if he disapproved of Pittston or of something else and went back into his den. ¥or half an hour their low talk kept in a sort of harmony with the solemn rumblo of wheels. Her gloved hand had fallen into the nearest of his. The pressure he gave it contained the essence of a mighty embrace. There was nobody to sec if their hands came very close together. • Suddenly the groom sat upright and darted at the inside pocket of his sackcoat.

“Great Scott!” he gasped; " I forgot to tell the baggageman about that satchel.” “Charlie!” She said no more, but there was a world of distress. in the tone. “I shall telegraph for it in the morning,” he said. “But, Charlie,” she protested, “don’t you know that we can’t go anywhere without the satchel?” A deep gloom began to settle about Charlie. The train slowed up at a station. “ I will get off and get the station man to telegraph back and we can have it by the midnight train.'’ She did not object in words, but she half grasped his arm as he started for the door. In a moment she could see him crossing the dim platform. It came into her thoughts that it would be areal tragedy if he should get left at the station. Her impatienoe developed into agony when it began to appear that the train would soon start again. She knew it was silly, but she got up and went to the door. One or two passengers were getting on. Then the porter climbed up with the stool used as a mounting step. Plainly she thought Charlie was going to 1 e lclt behind. She stepped out on the platform and caught the vestibule door. " Excuse me, tnadame.” said the porter, “ but the train is going." “I know it.” gasped the girl, “and •ny husband is over there.” The situation was grotesquely terrible to her. With no satchel and no husband it seemed simply absurd to stay on the train. She would not stay on the train. The wheels were already moving when she eluded the porter and sprang •o the platform. As she ran across the jdatform to where the station master’s • ; ght was glaring, her husband, who had "■ trriediy mounted the steps at the other *»«l of the ear, was wandering in some p-rplvilty through the aisle. Could ej be in the wrong car t No, here was *** lit*in traveling fan.

The porter came over. “Did you see the lady, sir? She was afraid you would get left, sir.” Charley Merrill rushed for the platform. But the vestibule doors were locked and the train was under good headway. At that moment life began to seem like a melodrama to poor Merrill. “When do we reach the next station?” he asked of the porter. “At 12. sir,” was the answer.

Merrill dropped into a seat in grotesque despair. The twenty-five minutes to Silver Hill seemed longer than the wait of a table d’hote. Merrill occupied the time with more or less torturing speculations as to what the girl would do when she fouud that he had not been left behind, and that they had been separated by another ridiculous mistake. He did not. blame her for her blunder, for this had been the result of a blunder of his own in forgetting certain necessary arrangements at the station from which they had started. He pictured her despair at the separation, and then he tried to think that the whole thing was comic, but did not succeed very well in the effort. He could como to no conclusion as to what she would do. She might have taken the midnight train and followed him if she had been supplied with the money to buy a tick t. As it was he did not see that she could do anything more than wait for him to come back for her, us she must kuow that he would. Merrill found that there was a train from Silver Hill back to the station of the mishap a few minutes after 12. lie could reach the girl, he calculated, soon \ after half-past 12. He sptaDg off the ; train at Silver Hill in a fever of impa- ; tience. The northern train was due in a quarter of an hour. Merrill hunted up the station master, without thinking it necessary to say anything about a wedding, yet he fancied that the station master took a degree of interest in the matter that might look as if he suspected a sentimental side of the case. Presently the telegraph instrument in the station was ticking a message. “I think I can find out whether she is still there,” said the station master. Merrill said nothing. He did not wish to delay for the space of a second the coming ot the reply, if there should be one. The auswer was now coming over the wire. For a moment the operator’s face ; was inscrutable. Then lie looked up quickly. “The station master down there.” he said, “fixed it up with the conductor of the midnight, and put her ou that train.” “Good! ” gasped Merrill, with a sense of relief that was abruptly terminated I by something in the look of the station master at his side. “The midnight does not stop here,” said the statiou master. Merrill was ready to faint. Ilis bride would be carried through to Pittston without him. “How soon can I follow that traiD,” he choked, as if with some - expectation that the station master might have the decency to modify the time table. The station master looked commiser- ! atingly a‘ him as he replied, “The next train stopping at Pittson is 5.30.”

Merrill sat down on the nearest bench. He could not think. The situation had become absolutely stupefying. lie would not be able to reach his wife for over six hours. What would become of her in Ijjat dreadfid interval ? And how could he live during such a ghastly period of waiting ? Merrill made up his mied that he simply could not stand the torture of such protracted uncertainty. He would have liked to hire a special train. People had done such things. Perhaps all of his honeymoon money would hire an engine to carry him to Pittston. He fancied himself riding madly aerrgs th? country in the cab of a snorting locomotivfl. Pretty soou he abandoned his thought and began figuring ou the distance to Pittston. They told him it was thirtyone miles. lie asked to be directed to a public stable. They didn’t know of anybody but Gibbs, and were very uncertain about him at that hour. After fifteen minutes’ delay Gibbs was found in a barroom half a mile from the station. At first Gibbs wouldn’t drive anybody anywhere for anything. Then he compromised by saying that lie wouldn't drive anybody to Pittston, at which Merrill took hope. “The fact is,” said Gibbs, ‘‘that I haven’t a horse tlmt’ll stand it. You will have to he driven like the devil.” “I will give you a dollar a mile,’’ said Merrill. Gibbs shook his head. Thou he said: “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll drive you to Mandy’s, that’s twenty miles, and you can get something at Mandy’s for the other ten miles. I’ll do that for's2s.” “It’s a bargain,” said Merrill, “if you’ll hump yourself and hump tliat horse. ”

The “midnight” went shrieking by them as the horse was getting down to a stiff trot. Merrill stared gloomily at the muffled “sleepers,” knowing that his heroine was being carried away from him by the thundering train. Gibbs’ horse was a good stepper, but Gibbs did not seem t > 1 e pressing him. After they were fairly started Gibbs admitted that the horse had been driveu rather hard the day before, and that he couldn’t afford to be harsh with him. As it was he did not intend to bring him back from Mandy’s until daylight. When about half the distance had been accomplished Gibbs suddenly said: “I guess you had better let me have some of that money. Of course I don’t know you, and this is a pretty heavy job. The horse is acting mighty queer, and I’m not sure this racket won’t do him up.” To Merrill there didn’t seem to be much danger. “ Are you afraid you won’t get me there?” he asked. “I’ll get you there,” returned Gibbs. Merrill gave him ten dollars. “The fifteen when we get there,” he added. Then the horse began to lame. Gibbs muttered an oath, stopped the horse and got out. Merrill saw that he was looking at the hoofs for a stone. Evidently he didn’t find anything of the kind. The limp continued and Gibbs kept the beast at a walk, a pace that made the sweat start on Merrill’s temples. Merrill wondered if ever a bridegroom was in such a plight before. If he had read of such a thing in a book he would have impatiently condemned the exaggeration of the author. It began to be a comfort that the Gibbs’ contract only extended to Mandy’s. At the sickening rate of the Gibbs’ horse the bridegroom calculated that he would reach the bride at about 0 A. M. which seemed like a preposterous thought. There could not be a worse horse at Manffy's.

Merrill twice asked Gibbs how much further they had to go, but as Gibbs each time seemed to allow the horse to walk at a still slower pace, Merrill concluded that it would be unsafe to say another word. At the foot of a long hill the horse stopped. It was a quarter to three. “I guess we’ll have to leg this,” said Gibbs, “if wo ever want to get there.” /. t the top of the hill Gibbs told Merrill to get I in, but he himself continued walking at i the hcsul of the hone. The sky had bc--1 come overcast. “ Going to be a had

night,” growled Gibb’s. Merrill mentally remarked that the night had already been pretty bad for him. They reached Mandy’s at four o'clock. The rain was falling. Gibbs called up a man who lived iu a white house, after having made Merrill wait until he had bestowed the horse and buggy in the barn back of the village store. “Giles,” said Gibbs, to tho head that appeared at a window, “this gentleman wants to get to Pittston. Have you got a horse y’ can let him have?" “Waal, I dunno,” responded Giles. “ Got to go south with my mare at six.” “Hain’t v’ got that bay ?” “Th’ bav ain’t fit,” said Giles. He ! added, “What’s it wntli ?” i “ Ten,” said Merrill, “if you’ll drive | me over iu a hurry.” Gibbs disappeared after getting the I balance of his money, ft was twenty- ! eight minutes later by Merrill’s watch when the secoud start was made, and it was at the end of the first mile that the second horse stumbled in the wet morning twilight and splintered the shaft of the buggy. Merrill sprang into the road. “Good morning!” he shouted, striding off through the soft olav. But when he heard a protesting suort from Giles he turned about for a moment and shoved a hill into the man's hand. For an hour he struggled on through the dim road, which grew but little lighter during that time, and became increasingly wet. At the fork of the road he had to delay for tea minutes until he could find a sleepy man with red whiskers who gave him instructions to keep to the left all the way. Morrill looked at his watch with a shudder. A quarter past 5. He kept to the left with a persistency born of a lover’s faithfulness and expeotancy, until hq came against a huge barn. When he appealed brokenly to a solitary woman at a well she yelled back at him that he would have to go back about three-quarters of a mile to where the quarry was, and then take the road just beyond the tobacco barn. Poor Merrill, who pitiably timed every turn, reached the tobacco barn at twenty minutes to six. He then put in a straight hall-hour on the right road, and at the end of this very muddy period hejieard the low whistle of a locomotive. It was the train he might have comfortably taken if he had kept out of the Gibbs contract. At seven o'clock he reached the outskirts of a town. “Is this Pittston?” Merrill asked of a boy with a pail. “East Pittston,” said the boy. “How do you get to the Pittston station?”

“There’s a horse oar down there,” the boy said, pointing through a side road. Merrill found the track. The car was not so easy to find. The bob-tuil car with a sad horse hove iu sight at the end of seven minutes. That this car could actually be going direct to the statiou seemed to Merrill too good to be true. He twice asked the driver abont the station, and was twice assured that the station was at the end of the route. Merrill was on the platform of the car when the station became visible. He rushed almost madly iuto the waiting room. No bride was in sight. Nor oould he see any welcome figure in the ladies’ waiting room. lie was almost running across the station to the inquiry window when the violent tapping of a pencil on the ledge of the telegraph office attracted his attention. The pretty girl behind the grating was beckoning to him. As he paused there the pretty telegrapher was asking: “Are you the gentleman—that is looking for the lady who—who was waiting for the gentleman.” “Yes, I am,” gasped Merrill. “Well, she is in here.” Merrill found her sleeping on a sofa. Her eyelids were red. As the bridegroom well wet and spattered with mud, knelt down beside tho sofa and took hold of one of her hands the bride awoke with a start and the pretty telegrapher turned her face away.—[Philadelphia Press.