Newspapers / The Weekly Raleigh Register … / Oct. 29, 1884, edition 1 / Page 1
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r ; ir! r. ft By P. M. EAlS. ADYXBTISING BATES. office: , -f v-, r'ft .' Advertisements will be inserted for One Dullar per square (one inch) for the first and Fifty Cents for each subsequent publication. Contracts lor advertising for any space or time may be made at the office of tho RALEIGH REGISTER, '.. Second Floor of Fisher Building, Fayetteville Street, next to Market House. n 1.. 111. CTa 1 VlnVn. Ttnllln i ..',,. " - .i ..... ; ' -i 'i.:. if RATES OF subscription: f One copj one year, mailed post-paid... ...$2 00 j Oae copy six months, mailed post-paid. . ..101 g; No name entered without payment, and I RALEIGH, N. C, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1884. NO. 36. no paper sent after expiration of time paid for. S, ) COMING INTO PORT. .' Blackwood's Magazine. J I have weathered the turbulent cape of storms, "Where the winds of passion blow; I have sheered by the reefs that gnash to foam The shallows they lurk below; I have joyed m the surge of the whistling sea, " And the wild strong stress of the gale, Ab my brave bark quivered and leaped, alive, To the strain of its crowded sail. Then the masterful spirit was on me, j And with Nature I wrestled glad; And danger was like a passionate bride, i f And Love was itself half mad. Then Life was a storm that blew me on, j And flew as the wild winds fly; And Hope was a pennon streaming out 1 High up to play with the sky. Oh the golden days, the glorious days That so lavish of life we spent ! .. Oh the dreaming nights with the silent stars 'Neath the sky's mysterious tent ! Oh the light, light heart and the strong desires, : And the pulse's quickening thrill, When Joy lived with us, and Beauty smiled, ' And Youth had its free, full will ! The whole wide world was before us then,' : Anu never our spirits failed, And we never looked back, but onward, onward ; Into the Future we sailed. Ever before us the far horizon Whose dim and exquisite line Alone divided our Earth from Heaven, ; Our Life from a Life divine. "Sow my voyage is. well-nigh over, And my stanchest spars are gone; And my sails are rent, and my barnacled bark I Drags slowly and heavily on. The faint breeze comes from the distant shore With its odors dim and sweet, And soon in the silent harbor of peace , Long-parted friends I shall greet. The voyage is well-nigh over, Though at times a capful of wind Will rattle the, ropes and fill the sails. Aud furrow wake behind. . Rut the sea-has become a weariness, And glad into port I shall come With my sails all furled, and my anchor dropped, , And my cargo carried home. ' THE TWO WIDOWS. f Warren's Diary of a Detective. The quiet enjoyment with ray wife and phildren of Christmas Day, 1835, was bro ken in upon by Inspector Thomas, with a message from Colonel Rowan, the then Chief Commissioner, requiring me to first make myself thoroughly master of the papers sent to me by Thomas, and that done, forthwith place myself in eonfiden itial communication with two ladies : one, p Mrs. Hughes, whom I should find at the Clarendon, Bond street; the other, Mrs. Lister, who was staying at Osborne's Ho tel, in the Adelphi. Mrs. Lister would see me at any time, but it was requisite that I should wait upon Mrs. Hughes be fore her dinner hour, seven o'clock. Above all, I was to be scrupulously careful that neither of the ladies should for a moment suspect that I was in correspondence with the other. ' "it's a tangled skein to unravel, re marked Thomas, after delivering the Com missioner's message. ' There are, it seems, : two widows of one gentleman, one son of both, and lots of 'tin' depending upon the result." 'Two widows of one gentleman! one son of two widows ! You are jesting, of course. "Not a bit of it. There are two sets of , lawyers, too, in the case. Here are their ! names and addresses. Smith & Smith, of Gray's Inn, Mrs. Hughes's attorneys; and i Messrs. Jones & Son, of Bedford Row, ; who are acting for Mrs. Lister. And - mind, you must be as careful,' continued the inspector, "to keep Jones & Son in the dark as to your being in consultation with Smith & Smith, and rice term, as you i will be with respect to the widows. You'll ; find, I fancy," Thomas went on to say, ; "that vou are expected to be a sort of ; second Solomon ; with this difference, how t ever, that instead of ordering the boy, . when you've got him, to be divided be tween the two mothers, you, after arriving at a settled conviction upon the case, are at once to go in, back and edge, against the party in the wrong, in conjunction naturally with the right party s attorneys. Vou must, however, the Commissioner in- sists, be dead sure of vour game before showing your hand to the lawyers." Thomas, who seemed to enjoy, in a mild ( way, the vexation which his errand at such : a time caused me, added the compliments of the season and left me to the enjoyment ' of the bundle of papers he had placed be : fore me. Indulgence in ill-temper would avail nothing, so, resolutely buckling to ' at the task assigned me, I had, by nine in : the evening, fully possessed myself of the ' details of the affair as set forth in the pa pers, and by the vita toce additions and corrections supplied by the two widows, whom I duly visited at their temporary abodes. In order to render the perplexing maze of circumstance, conjecture, and suspicion at jill plain to the reader, I must begin at ; the beginning of the complicated involve : ment about ten. -years, that is to sayj pre vious to the Christmas Day when the agency of the Detective Police was simul taneously invoked by both parties. Sir William Hughes was a rich north country manufacturer, who had been knighted by the Prince Regent, and who, soon after that accession of dignity, took up his abode at Stone Hall, in the hunting county of Leicester. The old families fought shy, as might have been expected, of the "cotton-fellow," notwithstanding the costliness of his establishment. To overcome that repugnance, Sir William iet up as a sportsman; purchased a rare pack of hounds, and spared no outlay or pains to '-'afford snort to his aristocratic neighbors. His own appearance and ex ploits in the field seem to have been de . cidedly successful in that particular, and Jthc end was, that having one day ven tured upon the back of a high-spirited hunter, which cost him the trifle of two hundred guineas, he was pitched with great violence over the high-spirited ani mal's 'head upon his own. This was the lust of his fields and though, after lying : for several weeks between life and death, he recovered his physical health, his mind remained permanently affected ; but not to such a degree as to convince a jury sum moned under a writ of de lunatieo, issued at the instance of his only son, that he, Sir William Hughes,' was incapable of managing his own affairs. Sir William had been long a widower, and this, his only surviving son, Edmund, had been sowing a seemingly interminable crop of "wild oats" in Paris, London, and other .prolific soils, for about the same length of time; and not yet thirty, had ' already reaped the harvest of such hus-, bandry broken health, cankered weari ness of spirit, and no end of debts. His attempt to obtain a judicial declaration of his father's insanity deeply offended Sir William, and it was many months berore the afflicted gentleman could bear the briefest chance-sight of his son, without peril to his own life, from the excitement of angry rage. Under such circumstances it was natu ral that Sir William, influenced, it might be, by a consciousness of deeper-seated mental infirmity than the eommssion de lunatieo had been able to detect, should have Ibeen anxious to secure the kindly services and society of Mrs. Warner, a distant relative, then residing at a sea-port in tne west or England. This lady was a widow, her age the shady side of fifty, and her circumstances by no means over prosperous. Of course, marriage was out of the question ; and after a brief negotia tion Mrs. Warner and Caroline Sherwood, her orphan niece, took up their abode at Dtone nau, as nouseKeepers, nurses, ana companions to the aged, fast-failing knight. This arrangement which worked very well, was suddenly thrown out of gear by the death of Mrs. Warner, about four months - only after her domiciliation in Leicestershire.- Those, four months had. however, enabled Caroline Sherwood to obtain a lasting hold upon Sir William's regard, who looked upon and always spoke of her as his adopted daughter ; and she, nothing loth, remained to minister to the old gentleman's needs, and direct his household. Caroline Sherwood, when that onerous task devolved upon her, was in her twenty first year, and remarkable both for intelli gence and personal attractions. Her char ade, I judged, from the papers placed in my hands, and the long conference I held witlt her (she was the Mrs. Lister I was directed to meet at Osborne's Hotel), to have been, like most others, a mingled yarn of good and evil, of excellencies and defects. One main defect, or I wronged her, was an inordinate craving after riches; or more correctly, perhaps, the social dis tinction that usually accompanies wealthJ .notwithstanding the latent Plutonian passion, Caroline Sherwood had, some twelve months before she removed to Stone Hall, surrendered her heart and promised her hand to Mr. Charles Lister, second lieutenant of the "Blonde" frigate, whose only worldly wealth, actual atjd prospective, was his pay. The engage ment had been strongly disapproved of by Jars. Warner, and during her aunt's life the correspondence of the lovers had been carried on by clandestine means. After that lady's death, Lieutenant Lister's let ters were openly directed to Stone Hall, Sir William having by that time become incapable of exercising the slightest super vision over Miss Sherwood's doings. He had no wish to do so. As his shaken in tellect dwindled into utter childishness, his regard increased for the handsome young woman, whose sweet voice and soft hand were so gentle and caressing: and he was perpetually promising himself aloud to make her his sole heiress, to the exclu sion of his scoundrel son. Now, Caroline Sherwood, as she herself told me in after days, did not for a mo ment suffer herself to be deluded into a belief that any will which Sir William eould in his then state of mind make in her favor would be worth the paper or parchment it was written upon. It is right to state this, because it seems to show that her kindness to the sinking in valid was not prompted by selfish, un worthy motives. Very certain it is, how ever, that Miss Sherwood must have kept her opinion of Sir William's testamentary incapacity strictly to herself, and have been, moreover, especially careful not to give a hint to that effect to, or in the hearing of, the son and heir. An assur ance of the kind would have been deemed invaluable by Mr. Edmund Hughes, who, though forbidden to present mmself at stone Halt, was kept pretty well an emrant of his father's demonstrations and promis es in favor of Miss Sherwood by the ser vants. These greatly disquieted him, fully believing as he did that Sir William could3 make a valid will, The verdict of the jury establishing Sir William's competency to manage his own affairs appeared to him conclusive on that point. Deeply impressed with that conviction. Mr. Edmund Hughes deemed it a grand stroke of policy to privately solicit Miss oherwood in marriage. As her husband he would be safe, however matters turned out. "She was a fine, clever girl, too, and he almost felt, and quite successfully feigned, a real passion for her. Aye, and the dazzled, facile fair one yielded to his suit, and became by a strictly private mar riage Mrs. Edmund Hughes. Whilst photographing by such feeble light as I possess the actual features, men tal or moral, of real people whom I have chanced to meet with in the highways and byways of woric-a-day life. I quite agree, in a transcendental sense, with the creat ive writers who draw fancy portraits of heroic, angelic superhuman beings. No question that Caroline Sherwood ought to Have indignantly spurned the overtures of Mr. Edmund Hughes, and remained in flexibly faithful to Mr. Charles Lister. I am very far from disputing that; still it is but fair to consider for a moment the ex act 'position in which the young lady found herself at that crisis and turning point in her life. A kind of coolness had of late arisen between her and Lieutenant Lister to what owing I was not informed, but I suppose to the cold shade inevitably cost by lordly proximate wealth between her and her lover. Then, the 'Blonde" was about to be paid off. In those piping times of peace it was very doubtful wheth er the unfriended lieutenant would be again employed in active service, and his half-pay, to support a lady wile and a pos siblV: large family, would have been con siderably less than two pounds per week. Such was the chilling prospect of her fu ture which presented itself from one point of view. A glance in the opposite direc tion showed a husband, still a young man. of prepossessing exterior and address, whom she knew to be the undoubted heir of more than eight thousand per annum in real estate, of Stone Hail and park, and a heap of personals; and who, moreover, professed unbounded admiration of her own sweet self. Positively I am not sure that I have ever known one young damsel who, constrained by the like circumstances, would have decided differently from Caro line Sherwood. My acquaintance with the better sex is, however, a limited one. The state of affairs which I have thus broadly sketched was not,i of course, stated to me in. so many words by Mrs. Lister; but the essential facts it was neces sary to inform me of ; and these told the story so plainly, that "We were married privately at Leicester," seemed to be that story's quite natural sequel. ' - The marriage was scarcely a month old when a paralytic fit extinguished all of mental or physical vitality remaining to Sir William Hughes, and the fourth day from the attack he was a corpse. No will, valid or invalid, had been executed, and Edmund Hughes succeeded, by unques tionable right, to his father's large pos sessions. There had been no necessity 1 then that he should hamper himself with a wife. He had been the merest idiot to do so: and his folly was the more exasper ating, inasmuch as the honey-month suf ficed to convince him that he had felt no real, or at least - no abiding, love for the pretty beggar whom he. in evil hour, had made the partner of his splendid fortunes. Mr. Hughes did not, to be sure, inake any speech of this kind to his wne, out mat he felt towards her in that kind she, with woman's keen discernment in such mat ters, was certain as of her -own existence, before Sir William had been borne to his grave. . Another week had scarcely passed, when her impression as to the-cause of the con temptuous coldness exhibited by her hus band in his constrained intercourse with, and the morbid irritation ho displayed towards her, underwent important modifi cations. Mrs. Hughes entered the library one morning, not knowing her ' husband was there. Tie had just reeeived his post-let-ters. Upon seeing her he manifested ex treme confusion ; and as he crumpled up his letters and thrust them into his writing desk, which he immediately locked, angri ly demanded why she had sought him there. The astonished wife replied that she did not know he was there ; then left the room. What meant that sudden confusion that crumpling up of letters, and hastily 1lacing them under lock and key? The etters Mrs. Hughes had noticed upon a table in the hall, and she, in looking to see if any were for her, had observed that two, sealed with black, were directed in an elegant female hand by one female hand, though the letters had arrived by the same post. A glance at the post marks showed they had been forwarded on two successive days a frequent occur rence in the cross-post deliveries at Stone Hall. Doubtless they were letters from some distant female relative ; the first sent, a missive of condolence; the other a solici tation, possibly, of some kind of gift or favor. So concluded the young wife as she observed the letters. But that reason ing would not hold good ' after the scene in the library. Her newer surmiseywas that they were missives from a favorite mistress, dispatched with peremptory im patience to the new owner of Stone Hall. A wife need not have an extravagant regard for her husband to be violently jealous of him. Indignant resentment of marital infidelity is as fiercely excited, I have noticed, by outraged self-love as by wounded affection. At all events, Mrs. Hughes, who never affected any violent passion lor her husband, determined to satisfy herself, at any hazard, by any ex pedient, as to the mystery of those hur- f iedly-hidden letters. Mr. Hughes would soon take his morning ride; she knew where the key of his escritoire was kept ; and should she, the key being concealed, have to break open the desk, she would, what ever the consequence, know who the wo-, man correspondent of her husband, was, and what were her pretensions. The wife's purpose proved easy enough of fulfilment; her husband was gone; had left the key of hia desk in the usual place. She held the letters in her hand, read them, and drank poison as she read. They were from Hughes's wife, not mistress; and in somewhat querulous tones insisted that he should, being now his owii master, come at once to London for the purpose of conducting her and their child to Stone Hall. The second letter was to the same tune, with the addition that little Emily was in delicate health, which a speedy re moval to the country, a physician had de clared, could alone invigorate. Both let ters were subscribed, "Your affectionate wife, Emily Hughes." The strong will of Caroline Sherwood, as we must now again call the unhappy young woman, enabled her to go through the terrible letters, sentence by sentence, word by word, till their genuine, truthful character was impressed upon her mind ; then hope and strength alike forsook heT, and she fell down in a swoon with such helpless heaviness that the noise was heard by the servants below, by whose efforts she was restored to consciousness and de spair. The letters were still tightly clutched in her grasp ; and the moment she had fully realized the position into which she had been entrapped by Hughes's villainy, she resolved to invoke the ven geance of the law upon his guilty head. She had not had time to leave Stone Hall when Hughes returned. A terrible scene ensued, which nevertheless ended in her sullen acquiescence in his advice to sleep upon the matter - before committing herself to a step which, whatever the con sequences as regarded himself conse quences which he was fully prepared to meet and defy would irretrievably com promise her in the eves of the world, and condemn her to a life of hopeless, poverty and cankering discontent. The substance of the man's specious harangue may be briefly given; he had married a young lady about two years pre viously, by whom he had one child, a girl; but where the all-important point in a legal point of view that marriage was solemnized, he would defy Miss Sherwood and all the lawyers in Leicestershire and London to discover. The first wife had married him for himself alone, not because she knew him to be the undoubted heir of a vast property; and upon the slightest hint that he was in jeopardy for an act committed under the pressure of an over whelming apprehension of beggary from which one candid word of Miss Sherwood's would have relieved him would at once .vanish from the scene, if only for their child's sake. The letters, Miss Sherwood had no doubt observed, were simply dated from London; a wide place to seek a Mrs. Hughes in. All, in fact, that Miss Sher wood had really ascertained by her viola tion of his private correspondence was that she was certainly not his wife. Thus it would nappen that, incapable of obtaining. legal proof of the hrst marriage (the let ters, even Miss Sherwood must know,' were, as evidence, mere waste paper), she would be unable to successfully prosecute him ; still less, he was quite aware, could she, with her knowledge of the real facts, consent to live with him as his pre tended wife. The upshot, then, of the very unpleasant affair roust infallibly be. that Miss Sherwood would herself incur the pains and penalties of the exposure. without being able to inflict the slightest injury upon him. He should, when the hubbub which after all he cared very little for had subsided, live in splendor abroad with his true wife, . whilst Miss Sherwood would have been deprived of an honorable alliance or settlement by her own senseless outcry. It must be admitted that there was a good deal of brazen ingenuity in the spe cious scoundrel's way of putting the case, and one cannot feel astonished that Miss Sherwood, distracted by terror and 'Sur prise.- left him with the tacit understand ing that she would pause before invoking the law to avenge the cruel wrong it had no power to redress. Night, in contradiction to the provesb, brought no counsel to the frenzied young lady. Fiery indignation still spurred her on, pale-hearted fear still held her back, from attempting to wreak vengeance upon the wrong-doer, when a post-letter direct ed to Miss Sherwood was brought to her. It was from her old and still devoted lover, Charles lister. He wrote to appoint an immediate interview at Leicester, adding that a most unexpected legacy enabled him to offer her a comfortable home. Miss Sherwood's resolution would ap pear to have been at once taken. She would see Lister, reveal to him all that had passed, and he guided implicitly by his advice. Whilst hastily preparing to depart a note was brought toner from Mr. Hughes. It contained an offer very guard edly expressed, of making Miss. Sherwood a present of ten thousand pounds, which sum would at any time after the lapse of a month, should no irritating occurrence intervene, be payable to her order. Mr. Hughes was himself waiting below, just within the door of the library, as Miss Sherwood swept by, no doubt- with the hope of ascertaining if his large money offer had mollified her rage, but she passed him without a word. In her long explanatory interview with me, Mrs, Lister passed rapidly, and with a heightened color over her meeting with Lister. The memories it recalled were too painful. Besides, the papers confided to my discretion sufficiently supplied, she knew, every essential fact and inference thereto. Lieutenant Lister, though much shocked and very savage at first, gradually calmed down ; solemnly declared that his beloved Caroline, being entirely innocent in intent, of stainless moral purity as ever, he would still joyfully take her to wife. 3Iiss Sher wood, after long hesitation, consented. It was mutually agreed to avoid in the future any mention of even Hughes's name; and shortly afterwards Charles Lister, bache lor, and Caroline Sherwood, spinster, were united in the holy bands of matrimony. Whether Lister was disinterestedly sin cere at the time of his marriage it is im possible for me to affirm or deny. A strong suspicion is, however, cast upon the puri ty of his apparent Quixotism by the un doubted fact that Caroline Sherwood did at that first interview incidentally mection the offer of ten thousand pounds hush- money by Mr. Hughes; and that she was empowered to draw for that magnificent sum, after a short interval, at pleasure. Still it may be that the notion of making a market of Mr. Hughe did not occur to Lister till after the birth of a son, between seven and eight months after the marriage, by which time, through imprudent ship ping speculations, he had fallen ' into pe cuniary embarassment. Certain it is that the Lieutenant and his wife lived most un happily together after but a few months of wedded cohabitation ; that be became in temperate in his habits, and personally brutal towards her. The hush-money which he compelled her to draw upon Hughes for was confiscated to further and uphold fresh speculations; and when, af ter a few years, that was compromised, he worked upon the bigamist s morbid dread of exposure to fleece him to a large extent. Lister had by some means obtained legal proof of the marriage between Emily Ker ton and Edmund Hughes, armed with which weapon he left the nervous master of stone Mall no rest or respite from ex tortion. He also, actuated by some hazy. but no doubt selfish motive, insisted that young Edmund Hughes Lister he was so named by the Lieutenant's own command should accompany him on his latter predatory visits to stone Hall. A prime result of that seeming caprice was that Mr. Hughes became strongly attached to the handsome boy, in reality, though not in law, as matters stood, his own son. Whatever castles in the air the Lieuten ant might have built upon the basis of those demonstrations of natural affection, he did not live to see the fruition or frus tration of his views. He died at Glouces ter, where he since his marriage had resid ed, a few months before Hughes was called to his account of brain-fever, Mrs. Lister reported : the more exact designs tion would probably have been delirium tremens. Thanks to Lister's persevering pulls at the purse of Edmund Hughes, Esq., his affairs wound up much more prosperously than had been anticipated. Mrs. Lister found herself in the possession of a suffi cient sunvto purchase a comfortable life annuity far herself, with remainder to her son, a safe if obscure haven from the bit ter storms of life, in which she had barely escaped from utter wreck Edmund Hughes, Esq., of Stone Hall, did not long survive Charles Lister, ex- lieutenant of the, "Blonde." Reckless spendthrift of health, as of less precious blessings, he had wasted in the' heyday of life the sources of a vigorous maturity, dying an old man at less than forty. The final warning came so suddenly that the lawyer, summoned in hot haste, and cau tioned by the physician in attendance that not one moment should be lost, had only time to pen a will of some twenty lines, by which the dying man bequeathed to "mv beloved wife" the whole of his .real and personal estate; constituted her his sole executrix, and guardian of "my children," to whom he doubted not she would be both kind and just. Probate was decreed upon this will, and Mrs. Hughes became one of the richest widows in Leicestershire. The word "children,'" inserted in the will at the testator's express dictation, re ferred, of course, to his daughter and Ed mund Hughes Lister. As. however, the mother's natural right could not be super ceded by the appointment of Mrs. Hughes to be his guardian, a friendly arrangement took place between the two widows, the substantial covenants oi which were that three hundred pounds per annum should be paid to Mrs. Lister lor his maintenance and education, and that on the day he be came of age the sum of five thousand pounds should be paid over to his use. So far the affair, . though sufficiently complicated, was intelligible, but now came a phase therein at the interpretation of which I could only make the wildest guesses. Airs. Hughes, accompanied uy ner daughter, mother, and father-in-law, Cap tain Burt, a grim Indian sun-bronzed vet eran, of some fifty years of age, paid Paris a visit about six months after the death of Mr. Hughes, and did not return to Eng land at all events, not to Stone Hall till after an absence of eight weeks. A fortnight after their arrival Captain Burt went to Gloucester and informed Mrs. Lis ter that his daughter-in-law, being anx ious to more effectually carry out her hus band's dying wishes with respect to the boy, Edmund Hughes Lister, so called, proposed that he should be forthwith dom iciled at Stone Hall, and be there in all respects educated and regarded as befitted his recognized co-hcirship withr Emily Hughes to the large property liequeathed by his and her father to Mrs, xlugnes, in trust a moral, and therefore equally ob Iigatorv trust for their future mutual benefit. 'Mrs. Lister, after taking time to consider the proposal, declined it; influ enced, ' she told me, by a vague presenti ment of peril to her boy, should she agree to what upon the face of it was . an unac countably munificent offer. Captain Burt finding he could not shake her resolve, took leave with the outrageously absurd threat of an appeal to the Court of Chan cery, with a view to' transfer the custody of the boy to Mrs. Hughes, there being no equitable doubt of his true paternity. The boy at the time of Captain Burt's abortive visit to Mrs. Lister, was at school in a large establishment in the neighbor hood of Bristol. Ten days afterwards a well-dressed man called there with a note, purporting to have been written at the in stance of Mrs. Lister, Tvho, it was stated, was dying, and anxious that her son should be sent to her immediately in the care of the bearer of the note. No suspicion of foul play being entertained, the boy was forthwith dispatched in charge of a stranger-gentleman, who travelled post. It was several weeks 4ef ore the audacious abduc tion of the boy was discovered ; precisely how J do not remember. The grief and distraction of the mother may be imagin ed. Her fixed conviction from the mo- ment Bhe could calmly reason on the occur rence was, that her son had been -carried off at the instigation of Mrs. Hughes,' in order to compel Mrs. Lister at no distant day to consent to the strange proposal of which Captain Burt had been the bearer. The Hughes family, on the other hand, indig nantly asserted that Mrs. Lister herself had caused her son to be secretly spirited away, partly for the purpose of annoying Mrs. Hughes, but principally in order to extort from that lady a heavy sum as pay ment for the privilege of carrying out he dying wishes of her deceased husband a pious purpose which Mrs. Lister knew lay near her heart. Meanwhile anxious search was made for the missing boy by the Hughes family. mm BUBuiuiuus usteniauon: advertise ments offering large rewards for his recov ery or tidings of him Were inserted in the principal papers, but utterly without avail. The stranger-gentleman who had given the name of Mareden, or Marston, to the principal of the Bristol school, seem ed to have vanished with his prey from off the face of the earth after leaving Swin dom, at which place the post-chaise had been hired. I have now brought the narrative down to the time when I, in pursuance of the Commissioner's orders, waited upon Mrs. Hughes at the Clarendon, and on Mrs. Lister, at Osborne's Hotel. x snail aismiss mese interviews very 1 II .1 - . briefly. Mrs. Lister's sincerity of grief was painiuiiy real. The accusation, there fore, of the Hughes family, that she was privy to the disappearance of her son, was. l could not lor a moment doubt, an un mitigated calumny. The conversation with Mrs. Hughes and her relative. Cap tain Burt, left an impression on my mind that though the lady might not personally oe implicated in tne abduction of young Lister, there was some mystery or dread in connection with that occurrence which greatly agitated and alarmed her. If, thought L as I confronted the stern, cold. slightly squinting stare, the curled, tight ly compressed lips, and massive iron jaw oi uaptain Hurt, "it 1 could imagine any sufficient motive you could have, prompt ing to such a deed as the carrying off of young Lister, aye, or to the taking away of his life it is you whose steps I should dog, your doings and associates for the last two or three months with respect to which I should make keenest inquisition." aim a hard, vulpine phiz, and a rusty nutmeg-grater voice, proved nothing, sug gestive, under certain conditions, as they might be. On coolly reviewing the affair on the following day, I could not for the life of me discover any means of setting about the task I was expected to successfully carry out. The only scrap of possibly valuable information afforded me was that the fellow who carried off the boy "was a tall well-set up military-looking man, with a prominent nose, nare-np, and a white, bloodless face." That was something, to be sure ; much, if I could fish out that he was an acquaintance of Captain Burt. It was in that direction I instinctively felt that the only chance lay. " well-set-up, military-looking man!" I would call at the Clarendon forthwith and take stock of the grim Captain more mi nutely than on the previous evening. There could be no harm, if no good, in that. The family had left, I found for 'Leices tershire; whither after much cogitation, and a conference with the Commissioner, I determined to follow. - The post-village was, I knew, about three miles distant from Stone Hall, and upon arrriving there, I, as good fortune would have it, obtained the use of a fur nished bedroom at a general grocery shop, kept by a widow, who was also the post mistress. The family at Stone Hall, and notably Captain Burt, were not, I found, in good odor with the post-mistress or the village folk generally: and I found no difficulty in inducing the widow to permit me to inspect tne addresses at the letters brought by a servant from Stone Hall, and the post marks of those which were addressed to the inmates of that residence. Three days had passed when a foreign- post letter arrived, addressed in an Eng lish hand'to Captain Burt, the post-mark of which I with some difficulty made out to be Chateauroux, France, a considerable post-town south of Paris. I had not to wait long for the Captain's reply. It came next day : "Lieut. James, Chateauroux, France: Poste Reatante. " I reached Chateauroux before the letter, and Laving, of course, supplied myself with proper credentials, placed myself at once in communication with a Commis- saire de Police. The arrangement I sug gested was- that 1 myself should remain perdu within the post-office during the hours of delivery ; and n a gentleman ana wering the description of the individual who carried off the boy from Bristol call ed for the letter, I could sally forth, while the postmaster held him in parley, seize and hand the culprit over to the French authorities. This I was told could not be allowed. All that the French police in such a case could permit was that Lieu tenant James should bo followed to his domicile, and if his explanation of the sus picions attaching to him were not deemed satisfactory, he should then be required to appear the next day before a magistrate, who would do what justice required "It is an affair between foreigners, and therefore quite exceptional, remarked the very civil and even more snuffy Commis- saire, in reply, as it were, to a movement of irritation which I could not repress. "But toyex tranquiUe; our system of pass ports, so admirably organized, will enable us to lay our hands upon M. James at any time, should he for a moment slip through our fingers. i ? Well, Lieutenant of the bloodless face, hare-lip, fcc., rode up the very next day to the post-office, on horseback, asked for the letter, and so clumsily was the whole affair managed, received it, and was again in the saddle before I could get into the street. I was so angry and excited, seeing he was about to ride off, that I stupidly cried out in English too to some gend armes who happened to be coming toward us, "Stop him! Stop that scoundrel!" The officers started ; so did Lieut. James, and, instantly suspecting something of the truth, put spurs to his horse, and was out of sight in no time. 1 must do my friend the French Com missary of Police the justice to admit that he discovered that very day that a Lieut. James had been residing for a considera ble time-at a farmer's house situated about three leagues from Chateauroux ; and that said Lieutenant James, who had borrowed the farmers mare the previous day, had returned at a break-neck pace, paid his bill, packed his portmanteau, and depart ed without delay, for Paris, the farmer's family supposed. Clever detectives we were, certainly ! 1 was half mad with vex ation. To Paris in search of a man with a hare lip, &c. A charming hunt that, which, though aided by the Paris police, I after four days and nights of exasperating and almost unremitting labor, finally aban doned. And n6w I am about to state a circum stance, or rather to relate an experience, the true explanation of which I am myself even now somewhat doubtful about. I retired to my lodging late in the after noon, utterly knocked up in body, and soured, wearied in spirit. Of dinner I ate little, but of wine I consumed a bottle: at least I was charged with one. Whilst sip ping it, my thoughts still ran upon the lnciuema, ine complications, and vexa tions of the business in which I was en gaged. Those thoughts slid, as it .were, into dreams ; a sleep, from which I awoke with a start, having surprised me. I re tired to bed, still continuing to think and dream, the ideas or notions becoming gradually more distinct, intelligent and coherent. Finally, I awoke, and believed I had dreampt that Edmund Hughes, dur ing the many years he had resided in Paris, had married a French lady, who was still alive, and that consequently, neither the lady calling herself Mrs. Hughes, nor Mrs. Lister, was the true widow of the deceas ed owner of Stone Hall. Captain Burt and" his daughter-in-law must, during their last visit to Paris, have discovered the truth, and though I could not but ad mit the inference to be a very lame one, indeed, had carried off young Lister in order to compel his mother to make com mon cause with them in resisting the claims of the rightful widow, and. in all likelihood, of the living heirs. I now be lieve that such an interpretation of the imbroglio, utterly absurd as it is in 'parts. must have suggested itself, in its chief fea ture, the previous French marriage, to mv waking imagination, which had been so long striving to work out the confounding A. J A 1 1 . ... contrauicuons, improoaouities, possibiu ties, of the case, to an intelligent issue; and tnat my dream nad but reproduced, otstorteoiy, those waking guesses. Nonsense or sense, folly or fact, I would at all events search the archives of the British Embassy, where alone I had under stood such a marriage could have been le gaiiy soiemnizea. lcave to do so was granted, as a -matter of course, upon pay ment f a heavy fee, and less than a quar ter of an hour's search was rewarded by ine discovery oi ine record or tne espous als of Edmund Hughes, son of Sir William 1 J ' m . i . Hughes, Knight of Stone Hall, Leicester shire, England, with Julie Adrienne Del ville, daughter of Hubert and Julie Del- ville, of Versailles, France. The date was nearly eighteen months previous to that of Edmund Hughes' marriage with Emily Eerton, at St. Andrew's, Holborn, first discovered to have taken place there by Lieutenant Lister and afterwards verified by Messrs. Jones and Son, of Bedford! Row, who had at one time entertained strong doubts as to whether the alleged marriage with Emily Kerton might not have been a device on the part of Hughes to rid himseli of a partner for whom he had conceived a strong aversion. To ascertain if the French wife was dead, and when, I at once hurried off to Versailles. M. Delville, who was well known and highly respected there I did not see his wife frankly answered my questions. Their daughter, only child, and wife of that seelerat Hughes had died, found, without issue, very nearly six months after the marriage at St. Andrews, Holborn, and eighteen months, conse- sequently, or thereabout, heore Edmund Hughes privately espoused Caroline Sher wood, who was, therefore, incon test ably, the wife to whom, by the atrocious biga mist's will, all his estates, real and per sonal, had been devised. M. Delville added, that several months previously an English military gentleman had called and asked similar questions to mine. There could be no doubt now as to the motives which had prompted the carrying off of young Lister, "otherwise Hughes. Should his father's will be set aside for ambiguity, he was the undoubted heir-at-law; and the audacious project had been concocted of wringing, at a fitting season, from the mother's love for her son, a com promise that would save Captain Burt, Emily Kerton, and her daughter from beg gary. The proposal, certain to be reject ed, made to Mrs. Lister at Gloucester, was, no doubt, a mere pretence, to be af terwards appealed to as a proof of Mrs. Hughes's tender regard for the boy,- and impossibility, therefore, that the, of all persons, could have entertained tbe idea of kidnapping him. Their nefarious tricks would be utterly defeated now, I exulted to think, as I, with all possible speed, returned to Eng land. A great error that on my part. In less than two hours after I reached Lon don I was closeted with Jones, senior, attorney-at-Iaw. That benign gentleman listened to my account of the important discoveries I had made, and received the documents I had brought from France, with a condescending, patronizing smile, and bushy eyehrows complacently raised in compliment to "my really very credita ble exertions in the case, which at the fit ting time should, I might entirely depend, be handsomely recompensed." He then civilly showed me out of the office. What afterwards occurred in re Hughes and Hughes I know nothing positively, except from, in some particulars, contra dictory newspaper reports. Mrs'. Lister was recognized to be the rightful Mrs. Hughes, and her son. who had been adroitly smuggled off to France, but well cared for there, was restored to her, upon conditions; namely, that one thousand one report said two thousand per annum should be secured to Emily Eerton, with succession to her daughter which was, perhaps, just enough and1 that Captain Burt's share in the abduction from the school near Bristol be quietly ignored These were, I believe, the main points of the compromise arranged by Messrs. Jones & Son and Smith & Smith. ' WOMEN FOLK. WIVES OF PRBSmEIfTS AND WIVES OF "CANDIDATES FOR PRESI DENT. A Gluee Baelc to I860 How Wives do Not Keep Face WttTrt Their Hm -.Xle Bnafort-anes or Presidential Wives. (New York World.J When the American people proceed to elect a President they do not seem to trou ble themselves very much about who is his wife, or what she is, or what his domestic relations are. Nothing could better illus trate the democratic character of our po litical institutions than that every now and then a President's wife appears who has no social fitness whatever for the place she is expected to occupy. The wives of all the recent Presidents excent one. Mrs. Hayes, never would ha e been selected to occupy the position they were compelled to assume when they went to Washington. airs, uncoin shrank from the ordeal, was never at ease while her husband was in the White House, and never recovered from the sad effects of her sojourn there. Mrs. Andrew Johnson was a very plain little woman who loved her husband as she ought to have done, but who never had a taste for fashionable society. " Mrs. Grant is one of the most faithful of wives, but her side of two Presidential terms will be forgotten a long time before that of her husband. Mrs. Hayes was the first wife of a Republican President to earrv uiv strong characteristics into her reign at the White House. She is a most amiable, in telligent lady, and is remembered with many more pleasurable emotions than her husband. Mrs. Garfield was a loving wife and a good mother, but going to Washing ton came near being as fatal to her as to President Garfield himself. She was as unsuited to the responsibilities of the Gsition she had to assume as Mrs. ncoln or Mrs. Andrew Johnson. Pres ident Arthur is more of a "society" man than any of his Republican prede cessors, and if his wife had lived with him .through his Administration she would have been; as highly esteemed by genteel people as the President himself is. bhe was a most lovable woman, and thor oughly familiar with polite usages. Mrs. Lincoln, Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Garfield all married self-made men before thejr were made that is, when they were young and poor and inconsequential. They and their husbands were on a level when they married ; they proceeded to raise up families of children, as all good wives should do, while their husbands proceeded to study and grow famous. After twenty years or so the husbands were quite ready to be Presidents, but their wives were not ready to be mistresses of the White House. They had not been cultivating themselves in that direction. Mr. Lincoln married Mary Todd in 1842, when he was a poor lawyer at the little village of Springfield, capital of the then sparsely settled State of Illinois. That was nineteen years be fore he became President. Andrew John son came from even more bumble surround ings than Abraham Lincoln. He was born in 1808, and married in 1827,'so that he was only nineteen when he assumed the responsibility of a wife. She taught him how to write and cipher, and was a good, patient, faithful woman. She had no de sire to appear in the glare of Washington society during the time her husband was President, and her daughter, Mrs. Patter son, took the lead of the social side of the White House. General Grant married Julia T. Dent, the daughter of a farmer, in 1848, and in 1852 he, after having be come a captain in the army, went to live with her father on his farm near St. Louis. Mrs. Grant at that time lived a very hum ble life, her husband making part of his income by selling wood by the wagon load in the streets of St. Louis. Af terwards he went to live with his own father at Galena, HI., where he pursued the occupation of a tanner and leather dealer. He was there when the war broke out. - The first ten years of his married life certainly gave no promise of his future positions and honors, and Mrs. Grant never dreamed of preparing herself to go into the White House. Fame never fell upon a family more suddenly nor more unexpectedly. President Garfield married Lucretia Randolph in 1856, while he was a teacher in a school. He was then thinking more of being a preacher than a politician, and his wife had no intimation of the cares and anxieties, to say nothing of the overwhelming sorrow, that awaited her as the first woman of the land. Mrs. Lin coln, Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Garfield were devoted wives and mothers, and that was worth more to the nation than fitness for fashionable society. Still they and their husbands would many a time .have been made happier if the latter 'had unit UCII ir;vituuiucB 111 lite. How would it have been if the Demo cratic candidates instead of the Republi can candidates had been elected Presi dents during this time that is from 1860 to the present? Lincoln and Douglass were both from Illinois, and there was a much greater contrast between their wives than between the two men. Douglass did not marry till he had reached an eminent position and Mrs. Douglass was distin guished for both beauty and all the ac complishments that adorn an attractive woman. At the time her husband was a candidate for President she was not more than thirty years old and had all the fresh ness of her youth. The failure of her hus band to be elected was a terrible blow to her ambition, for she and her husband probably had the Presidency in mind at the time of their marriage. The wife of Gen. McClellan, who was the Democratic candidate for President in 1864. was a very young woman at that time. She was the daughter of the late Gen. Marcy, who was on the staff of Gen. McClellan while he was in command of the Army of the Potomac. She was raised in Washington, though I believe Gen. Marcy's home was in Connecticut. Bhe and Gen. McClellan were married shortly before the opening of the war and now have two children, a daughter, Miss May, and a son, the latter being at school. If Mrs. McClellan had gone to the White House she would have been as great an adornment to it as Mrs. Douglass, though not so beautiful a wo man, nor one so fondof society. She has always liecn most highly esteemed, by a Very large circle of acquaintances whom she loves to greet at the receptions she gives during the winter. Gen. McClellan has an ample private fortune, and in sum mer lives at his beautiful country place on Orange Mountain, N. J., and during the winter season takes a house in New York City. If Mrs. McClellan had gone to the White House she would "have been a very popular woman. : While she is cultured to a high degree in both mind and manner. and while she numbers among her friends many who pride themselves on their ex- clusiveness, she is thoroughly Democratic in her ideas and her receptions take a wide range. Mrs. Horatio Seymour, whose hus band was the Democratic . candidate for President in 1868, was Miss Mary Bleecker. of Albany, before she married. . Her fatt er was a prominent and highly esteemed citizen, and had ample means to educate his children. Mrs. Seymour has always been greatly esteemed for her gentleness of manner and refined tastes. Horatio Seymour was the heir to a large fortune when he married her, and her associations have always been among the foremost peo ple of the State. Her husband was elect ed Governor of New York in 1852 and again in 1862, so she was twice the mis tress of the Gubernatorial mansion at Al bany before her husband was nominated for President. If he had been elected she would have been a worthy successor of Martha Washington. She has never had any children. Horatio Seymour, Jr., is a son of Gov. Seymour's brother. There is a Horatio Seymour, Jr., and a Samuel J. Tilden, Jr., but they are both nephews and not sons of the two great statesmen for whom they are named. Of the wife of poor Horace Greeley, the ill-fated Demo cratic candidate for President in 1872, I will not speak, as she died before his can didacy. If he had been elected his two daughters would have gone with him to the White House. One of them has since died and the other lives at the eld homestead at Chappaqua. Mr. Tilden, who was the Democratic candidate in 1876, is a bachelor, as everybody knows. Gen. Hancock, who was the next in the line of unfortunate candidates, has a most cultured wife, but she is of a very retiring disposition and was earnestly opposed to her husband's candidacy. She was a Miss Russell, of St. Louis, when Gen. Hancock, as a handsome young lieutenant, married her. Her father was a man of wealth, and at the time of her marriage she was a great favorite in the first social circles of St Louis. Her life was greatly saddened a few years ago by the death of a lovely daughter, who had just come to woman hood. She has musical ability of a high order, and has composed a number of pieces of noticeable merit. About the only place where she is seen in public is as organist of the little Episcopal church on Governor's Island. There might be a strong contrast drawn between the women who were the wives of candidates for President and those who were the wives of 'men who have been elected President -since 1860, but I shall leave that contrast to be drawn by the reader, begging to re peat the remark that the American people do not seem to bother themselves much about who a President's wife is. The misfortunes of women who have been the wives of our later Presidents is remarkable. Mrs. Harrison, Mrs. Taylor, Mrs. Lincoln and'Mrs. Garfield all became widows while at the White House, tho two' last under the most terrible circumstances. The first Mrs. Tyler died while her hus band was President, and the second Mrs. Tyler, who is now living at Georgetown, D. C, was compelled to ask Congress for a pension in 1879. Ex-President John Tyler died at Richmond in January, 1862, and his property was destroyed by the war. Mrs. James E. Polk, who is yet liv ing at Nashville at the advanced age of eighty-four, had a fortune left her and has long enjoyed the society of a rare circle of devoted.friend8, but the last days of ber life have been much embittered by the disgraceful defalcation and subsequent imprisonment of her nephew, who was State. Treasurer of Tennessee. Mrs. Tyler and Mrs. Polk are the only women now living who were wives of ante-bellum Pres idents, and it is rather odd that Mrs. Tyler is the younger of the two by twenty-five or thirty years, whereas her husband was President in 1843 and 1844. while Mr. Polk did not come into the office till later. Mrs. Tyler was not only a second wife but married at the early age of eighteen. She is the only Presidential wife, I believe, who had the honor of giving a wedding reception at the White House. There are at least two people in New York who danced at that reception Mr. Henry. Bergh and wife. I shall not attempt to recount the misfortunes of Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Garfield, for they are well known to all the world. Poor Mrs. Lincoln sur vived her husband a dozen years or more, but she never survived the shock that his death gave her, and the latter days of her life were clouded by a disordered mind. Few and far between were the happy mo ments that fell to her lot from the turbu lent hour that her husband became Presi dent. The story of Mrs. Andrew John son is almost as pathetic, but it is not so well known. She was nearly sixty years old when her husband became President, and had been married over forty years. She was almost as little known at Wash ington during the Presidential career of Andrew Johnson as if she had not lived at all, and the American people. know less about her than of the wives of any of the Chief Executives of their country. She died in 1876, six months after her husband had died. I do not suppose Mrs. Grant is by any means a happy woman, though she has the satisfaction of knowing that the American people will always hold her hus band in the highest esteem for his great military services. The disaster that came upon General Grant and her sons who were in business in the firm of Grant & Ward told very heavily upon her and she, along with the other recent President's wives, has a burden to bear. Mrs. Hayes seems to be peacefully settled in life, and lives quietly at a little village in Ohio. The greatest misfortune that has. come upon ner is that she is the wife of a Presi dent whose title was always held in doubt by a majority of the American people, and who holds as ex-President a very insignifi cant place in the public estimation. . J. R. R. Ills Presence of Ttllnd. Philadelphia Press. A certain lady who is not unknown in Philadelphia society has been twice a widow, but is now the pride of a third husband. The lady alludes to her hus bands as her "first," "former" and "pres ent, k one oiten relates pleasant memories of husbands one and. two.' The latter she describes as a man who always endeavored to appear perfectly cool and collected on every occasion. One summer they were staying at a hotel and were aroused in the middle of the night by an alarm of fire. The flames were burning fiercely, but the husband calmly said to his wife: "Dress carefully, my dear, just as much as if you were preparing for a ball.' Well, they flnally left the room and got out on the lawn in safety, with their portmanteaus even rescued. . The husband immediately began to dilate upon the advantage of al ways taking; things' coolly, to which his wife replied that she thoroughly agreed with him, but still she begged to : remind him that he had forgotten to put on his i nexpressiblea,"- and he had.
The Weekly Raleigh Register (Raleigh, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Oct. 29, 1884, edition 1
1
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