Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1878 — A ROMANCE OUTLIVED. [ARTICLE]

A ROMANCE OUTLIVED.

A few days ago one of the numerous trains upon the New Haven and Hartford Rinroad bore from this city, for entombment near an old family homestead some thirty miles up the Sound, the mortal remains of a venerable lady for whose manifold endearing virtues as Christian, wife and friend a bereaved home on a fashionable avenue was left in mourning. Probably but few of the sorrowing escort on that sad occasion were aware that she, whose long matronhood of uneventful social history was just closed, had once been the heroine of a romance as curious and pathetic as any known to the ingenuities of fiction; for, so far as the present narrator can ascertain, she was the last survivor of the several actors therein and could scarcely have found pleasure in any voluntary revival of its memory; yet such was the truth, and the place whither the body was being conveyed for its last rest had been the scene of that romance's strange culmination. Fifty years since, the place in question, not then stimulated to suburban importance by metropolitanrailway connection, had among the better mani sions on Its outskirts no handsomer ' one than that which was the parental ! home of the principal subject of this 1 sketch. An old family of high social S retensions cherished her there as a aughter doubly beloved for her striking resemblance to a sister married I in the city, and fond parents clung ardently to the hope that this remaining child should contract no new ties to withdraw her, also, from their neighborhood. Thus it was that when, during a visit the young lady was making to a family of friends in New York, these parents were informed that a gentleman, with obviously sentimental intentions, was a frequent claimant of her society, they took alarm as though threatened with imminent domestic treason. Forthwith the dismayed mother started post-haste in the family carriage for the point of danger, and, after nearly a whole day’s dusty ride, surprised, the unsuspecting fair one on the scene of her romantic adventure. The elders of the visited family, which was that of one of our oldest and richest merchants, had thought it their duty to invite the maternal supervision of an association it should properly control, and were not, therefore, amazed at the motherly arrival. As for the daughter, whatever her discomfiture might havebben, she frankly confessed at once that Lieut. H., of the English Navy, had, indeed, called upon her frequently and been her escort on promenade occasionally during her city visit; nor did she strive to disguise a strong sentiment in his favor. Then ensued a passage of passionate parental reprehension and filial tears. The lover in the case was not wholly a stranger to the girl's own household, for his mother haa belonged by birth and youthful residence to their very town, though married and settled in England; nor was he in any way socially objectionable, but the fact of his foreign naval profession and consequent presumable obligation to carry his bride to England was a bqr to his eligibility as a suitor which our heroine s doting father and mother held to be the most conclusive of disqualifications. Sternly reproving her daughter for having so imprudently encouraged the addresses of a young man whom she must see no more, the elder lady took the recusant damsel into the carriage with her for a prompt return to a stricter future home guardianship, and was horrified when her charge, emboldened by despair as the vehicle drove off, turned suddenly upon her with the exclamation: “ Mother, we are marriedP”

After this startling revelation the astounded matron exacted more detailed confession of an act of youthful impetuosity inspired by lovers’ fears of parental prohibition, and not in the least suspected by the New York friends. The pair, going out nominally for a walk, had oeen married at the residence of a friendly clergyman, and then returned to the house and taken leave of each other without betrayal of the secret. Such was the story carried back to the Connecticut homestead by indignant mother and agitated culprit, to excite the latter’s father, too, as intensely, and be followed by evei'y argument that parental authority and affection could advance to induce the weepgroom to whom she belonged in name alone, i These failing, the good old plan of bolt and key was adopted; the rebellious daughter became a close prisoner in her own chamber, and in £heir bewildered distress, father and mother summoned their married daughter from the city for aid and counsel in the family trouble. As may be fancied, the hero of the drama could not long, be kept in ignorance of these occurrences, and lost no . time in presenting himself on the scene -ana Remanding due recognition of his new relationship. He was met by a peremptory refusal to acknowledge the legal right alleged by him, on the

ground that she whom he claimed as his wife had perpetrated an act of childish folly, from which the utmoet strength of paternal will and Judicial equity should be exerted to redeem her and of which she herself had become bitterly penitent. Incredulous of this last intimation, Lieut. H. insisted upon seeing her wnose steadfastness was thus impugned and hearing his fate from her own lips; finally, in his chivalrous trust, pledging his honor as a gentleman to resign all claim upon her u, in his presence, she should prefer parents and present home to himself. His proposition was accepted, of necessity; the next day being named as the time of the interview, upon the supposition that the young lady was too sick from agitation at her hapless predicament to see him at once. At the appointed hour the Lieutenant waited upon the family, accompanied by a friend as a witness. The resolute mother received him in a room dimmed somewhat by the Venetian blinds drawn to keep out the sun, and he had not longtolinger before afamiliar figure flitted in at a door and past him, with handkerchief pressed close to eyes, and sank into a kneeling posture beside the older lady’s chair. The heart of the young husband failed him at the sight; but, taking a step forward, he put the one question he had to ask in the steadiest tones he could command: “Elizabeth, will you not go with meP” A moment the lips now hidden against the maternal bosom were silent, and then came the answer, tremulous and chilling: “I desire to remain with my mother!’’ Shocked inexpressibly, Lieut. H. paused only long enough to assure himself that the hidden face had not even a pitying glance for him, and then, with a resigned bow, quitted room and mansion without another word. However much he may have regretted his rashness in staking so much upon such a trial, it was plain that he recognized no hope of appeal. Believing that she who was his only by a brief ceremony of the church did indeed repent her share therein and wished its undoing, he doubted not that her brief response to his simple and earnest appeal meant complete renunciation of him. Yet scarcely had he withdrawn with his witness from the brief but momentous scene of rejection, when the face uplifted from its concealment on a mother’s breast was revealed as one strangely like that of the virgin wife, though not hers. While she, still a prisoner in her own room, did not even know that her husband was in the house, her sister, before mentioned as so closely resembling her and attired to increase "the resembancn, was enacting in her name and voice a deception into which she had been reluctantly persuaded by a mistaken sense of filial and sisterly exigent obligation. Destined never to oe undeceived, the young Lieutenant started sadly upon his return to this city . immediately by steamboat, having taken leave of the friend whose service as a witness had been so unnecessary, and accompanied only by a favorite dog. At an early point In the journey the animal sprang through the rails into the water in pursuit of some floating object; his master immediately sprang after, as though to rescue him, and the heavy billows of the Sound were the grave of as manly an English sailor as ever loved and lost. Years nad their slow but seldom unhealing effect for the widowed bride, who, after going near to death herself at the tragedy with which her brief romance had terminated, lived, almost bbyond the memory of it, to be a wife again, and, perhaps, carry with her to the grave last week only a half-credu-lous recollection of the piteous story of her distant girlhood.— Orpheus C. Kerr, in N. K Graphic.