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Seven Wives and Seven Prisons; Or, Experiences in the Life of a Matrimonial Monomaniac

<h2> CHAPTER XIII. ANOTHER WIDOW. </h2> WAITING FOR THE VERDICT—MY SON SENT TO STATE PRISON—WHAT SARAH WOULD HAVE DONE—INTERVIEW WITH MY FIRST WIFE—HELP FOR HENRY—THE BIDDEFORD WIDOW—HER EFFORT TO MARRY ME—OUR VISIT TO BOSTON—A WARNING—A GENEROUS GIFT—HENRY PARDONED—CLOSE OF THE SCHEIMER ACCOUNT—VISIT TO ONTARIO COUNTY—MY RICH COUSINS—WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN—MY BIRTH—PLACE REVISITED. I waited with nervous impatience for the close of the trial in New Jersey, when I hoped to welcome my son Henry to New York. It was so plain a case, as it seemed to me, and must appear, I thought, to everybody, that I hardly doubted his instant acquittal. But very shortly the New York lawyer whom I had sent to Belvidere, came back and brought terrible news. Henry had been tried, and notwithstanding the fairest showing in his favor, he was convicted and sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment at Trenton. As it appeared, it was I really, and not Henry, who was on trial. The circumstances of the desperate struggle, and my knocking down one of the men with the butt of my whip, were conspicuous in the case. Even the little boy was put on the stand, and was made to testify against his older half-brother. Henry himself was astounded at the result of the trial, and was firmly convinced that instead of "proving his innocence" to Jersey jurymen, he had better have let his innocence go by default. We never even got back again the three hundred dollars which had been put into the hands of the man who went bail for Henry when he was bound over for trial. For us, it was bad business from beginning to end. Henry wrote a letter to me, that just before his trial, before he had delivered himself up, and while he was still under bail, he had gone to see Sarah Scheimer on the little farm which was bought with her money, and was worked, so far as it was worked at all, by her drunken husband. The family were even poorer than the landlord at Water Gap had reported. Sarah herself was miserable and unhappy. She told Henry, when he informed her who he was, that if I had wanted to see her or her son, I should have been welcome. She would have been very glad to have had me take the boy and clothe him decently; but she could not part with him, and would not have let me take him away; still, I could see him at any time, and as often as I liked, and the boy should grow up to know and to look upon me as his father. And this, really, was all I desired, all I wanted; and it was all easily within my grasp, ready in fact to be put into my hands, and I had gone ahead in my usual mad, blundering way, acting, not only without advice, but against such advice as came from Henry at the last moment, and had alienated the mother from me, lost the boy, and had sent Henry, who was wholly innocent, to state prison for eighteen months. The poor fellow was take to Trenton and was put into the prison where I had spent seven months. He was almost crazy when he got there. His mother and sister went with him, and took lodgings in the place so as to be near him, to render him any assistance that might be in their power. I had been idle now for some weeks in New York, and I went back to Maine, to Biddeford, where I lad a good practice. I picked up a good deal of money, and in two months I returned to New York to make a brief visit, and to see if something could not be done for the release of Henry from prison. At my solicitation a friend of mine wrote to Trenton to Henry's mother to come on to New York, and meet me at the Metropolitan Hotel on a specified day, to transact some business. She came, and we met for the first time in several years. We met now simply on business, and there was no expression of sentiment or feeling on either side. We cared nothing for each other. I commended her for her devotion to Henry, and then told her I believed, if the proper efforts were made, he could be pardoned out of prison. I told her what lawyer and other persons to see, and how to proceed in the matter. I gave her the most minute instructions, and then handed her five hundred dollars with which to fee her lawyer, and to pay her and her daughter's living expenses in Trenton. She was grateful for the money, and was only too glad to go to work for Henry; she would have done it long ago if she had only known what to do. We then parted, and I have never seen the woman, since that day. This business transacted, I at once returned to my practice at Biddeford. Among my patients was a wealthy widow, "fat, fair, and forty," and I had not attended her long before a warm affection sprung up between us, and in time, when the widow recovered, we began to think we were in love with each other. I confess that I agreed to marry her; but it was to be at some distant day—a very distant day as I intended—for, strange as it may seem, and as it did seem to me, I had at last learned the lesson that I had better let matrimony alone. I had married too many wives, widows, milliners, and what not, already, and had suffered too severely for so doing. I meant that my Vermont imprisonment, the worst of all, should be the last. So I only "courted" the widow, calling upon her almost every day, and I was received and presented to her acquaintances as her affianced husband. Her family and immediate friends were violently opposed to the match, thereby showing their good sense. I was also informed that they knew something of my previous history, and I was warned that I had better not undertake to marry the widow. Bless their innocent hearts! I had no idea of doing it. I was daily amazed at my own common sense. My memory was active now; all my matrimonial mishaps of the past, with all the consequences, were ever present to my mind, and never more present than when was in the company of the fascinating widow. As for her, the more her relatives opposed the match, the more she was bent upon marrying me. Her family, she, said, were afraid they were going to lose her property, but she would never give them a cent of it, anyhow, and she would marry when and whom she pleased. Not "when," exactly; because, as she protested she would marry me, I had something to say about it; I had been run away with by a milliner in Vermont, and I had no idea of beings forcibly wedded by a widow in Maine. I pleaded that my business was not sufficiently established; I was liable to be called away from time to time; I had affairs to arrange in New York and elsewhere before I could settle down; and so the happy day was put off to an indefinite future time. By-and-by I had business in Boston, and the widow declared that she would go with me; she wanted to visit her friend's there and do some shopping; and without making particular mention of her intention to her relatives, she went with me, and we were in Boston together more than two weeks. At the end of that time she returned to Biddeford and notified her friends treat she was married to the doctor, though she had no certificate, not even a Troy one, to show for it. I deemed it advisable not to go back with her, but went to Worcester for a while. In a few days I went to Biddeford, keeping somewhat close, for I did not care to meet any of the relatives, and at night I called upon the widow. She told me that her family had raised a tremendous fuss about me, and had learned as much as they, and indeed she, wanted to know about my adventures in Vermont and New Hampshire. They had not gone back of that, but that was enough. It was dangerous, she told me, for me to stay there; I was sure to be arrested; I had better get away from the place as soon as possible. We might meet again by-and-by, but unless I wanted to be arrested I must leave, the place that very night. She gave me seven hundred dollars, pressed the money upon me, and I parted from her, returning to Worcester, and going from there to Boston. Besides what the widow bad given me, I had made more than one thousand dollars in Maine, and was comparatively well off. Then came the joyful intelligence that Henry was released. His mother had worked for him night and day. She bad drawn up a petition, secured a large number of sterling signatures, had gone with her counsel to see the Governor, had presented the petition and all the facts in the case, and the Governor had granted a pardon. Henry served only six months of the eighteen for which he was sentenced, and very soon after I received word that he was free, he came to me in Boston, stayed a few days, and then went home to his mother in Unadilla. With the release of my son, I considered the Scheimer account closed, and I have never made any effort to see Sarah or our boy since that time. From Boston I went to Pittsford, Ontario County, N. Y., where I had many friends, who knew nothing about any of my marriages or misfortunes, my arrests or imprisonments. I went visiting merely, and enjoyed myself so much that I stayed there nearly three months, going about the country, and practicing a little among my friends. I was never happier than I was during this time. I was free from prisons, free from my wives, and free from care. As a matrimonial monomaniac I now looked upon myself as cured. Among the friends whom I visited in Ontario County, and with whom I passed several pleasant weeks, were two cousins of mine whom I had not seen for many years, since we were children in fact, but who gave me a most cordial welcome, and made much of me while I was there. They knew absolutely nothing of my unhappy history—no unpleasant rumor even respecting me, had ever penetrated that quiet quarter of the State. I told them what I pleased of my past career, from boyhood to the present time, and to them I was only a tolerably successful doctor, who made money enough to live decently and dress well, and who was then suffering from overwork and badly in need of recuperation. This, indeed, was the ostensible reason for my visit to Ontario. I was somewhat shattered; my old prison trials and troubles began to tell upon me. I used to think sometimes that I was a little "out of my head;" I certainly was so whenever I entered upon one of my matrimonial schemes, and I must have been as mad as a March hare when I attempted to kidnap Sarah Scheimer's boy. After all the excitement and suffering of the past few years, I needed rest, and here I found it. My cousins were more than well-to-do farmers; they were enormously rich in lands and money. Just after the war of 1812, their father, my uncle, and my own father, had come to this, then wild and almost uninhabited, section of the State to settle. Soon after they arrived there my father's wife died, and this loss, with the general loneliness of the region, to say nothing of the fever and ague, soon drove my father back to Delaware County to his forge for a living, and to the day of his death he was nothing more than a hard-working, hand-to-mouth-living, common blacksmith. But my uncle stayed there, and, as time went on, he bought hundreds of acres of land for a mere song, which were now immensely valuable, and had made his children almost the richest people in that region. My Cousins were great farmers, extensive raisers of stock, wool-growers, and everything else that could make them prosperous. There seemed to be no end to their wealth, and their fiat farms, spread out on every side as far as the eye could see. And if my father had only stayed there, I could not help but think what a different life mine might have been. Instead of being the adventurer I was, and had been ever since I separated from my first and worst wife—doing well, perhaps, for a few weeks or a few months, and then blundering into a mad marriage or other difficulty which got me into prison; well-to-do to-day and to-morrow a beggar—I, too, might have been rich and respectable, and should have, saved myself a world of suffering. This was but a passing thought which did not mar my visit, or make it less pleasant to me. I went there to be happy, not to be miserable, and for three months I was happy indeed. From there I went to my birthplace in Columbia County, revisiting old scenes and the very few old friends and acquaintances who survived, or who had not moved away. I spent a month there and thereabouts, and at the end of that time I felt full restored to my usual good health, and was ready to go to work again, not in the matrimonial way, but in my medical business, that was enough for me now. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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