HER NINTH WEDDING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13453, 1 June 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

HER NINTH WEDDING.

WOMAN'S FRUITLESS QUEST FOR ; ; fcs HAPPINESS. j )e In the picturesque little Indiana town of! d- Newburg lives Mrs. Polly Weed Baker, j >'"iln towns of the sjze of Newburg gossip; ! ' s is its own excuse, but where did gossip! S - ever find such wonderful material. as in! in the life of Mrs. Baker? For this lady has] I i been married no fewer than nine times.) 3n and, according to ?. writer in a New York; I paper, is still dissatisfied, loveless, and! Qe alone! By the same authority we are told; -& that, she has "lost tiack" of the dates of 1 . I her weddings: she remembers them only! ?-j|as romances and .tragedies. It was in the': .fifties that Polly Castle lived at her father's: 1 .home near Newburg. Like every young a girl, her dreams were coloured by romance, and one day young Henry Fouquay came |into her life, and all the world was spring.) "'JThey married, und for seven years they] j tried to solve the riddle of happiness to- j jnigether. It took them a few minutes to be a- 1 made ■man and wife; it took seven long or years to find they were not mated. But! i( \ she would have fought for her happiness,! s , I would even have put a smiling mask on _. the face of her sorrow, but Fouquay would j ofinot be content with the masquerade; he ul sought something more real, and one day r - the law put an end to the farce, and Polly j ?8 Fouquay came face to face with tragedy.! \ Fouquay was her first love. Perhaps even [ ie now he has her heart, for, after all, a woman may be happy with any man, but ir- the man she is willing to be unhappy with to |is the man she loves. Was it the thought y* jof this first love that first attracted her ** to his soldier cousin, James Fouquay? If jr. she eought happiness in reminiscent pleatie j sure, James Fouquay sought for his in re | more material ways. And one night when 1C his blood was hot and his brain afire. • HE SNAPPED OUT A REVOLVER, ig and, but for the unsteadiness of the hand -il that, nad once protected her, this little ee wife of Newburg would have been lying ie in her grave these many years. Divorce! id j followed, and she returned to her father's j -d | farm. Disheartened and weary, the purie suit of her 'deal began to tire her; she i it would have rested. But Fate in the peru- son of her father spurred her on. Taking ie a fancy to one of his farm bauds, he could . ?- see no reason why Polly could not care for; is him, too. She didn't care; heartsick -as or she was, whatever life had in store for her was at this moment immaterial. It | ,1- was the ennui of passion, tolerance, thatit'she gave to James Henry Robinson. And: w he was only a man ; he sought happiness! ;n elsewhere. The honeymoon was scarcely! at over before she discovered his infidelity. 3r Again the law stepped in, and she was id single once move. Then into her life, fullgrown, came the most, wonderful instinct is, the heart of a woman can contain—the love r e of love. The woman who possesses it clothes the beggar in purple, sprinkles perfume on dead roses, touches all shadows i r . with the sunlight of her caprice. George! iS Boydon was a shadow. • Morbid, filled with m dark thoughts, he came to her at the. mo- j ,p ment when her heart ached for love. For & a while his sad nature appealed to her that subtle fascination that the mysterious has for all women. For ten years this fascinal tion held. She began to see the outlines j oof happiness. How eargerly she watched j ' and prayed. She fought the passing of] , another love song, but the threats of suicide became too loud, too frequent, and the hand of the law finally closed the door and left the man on the outside. Four; , j years passed, and at a period when years, ! count. Then came one of the sweeter ro- j imances that she loves to recall. Samuel| j" K. Weed was his name. He courted her, a " he married her. aawl four more years slip-! ' ped along. Four years of peace, four s ' years' of so-called happiness, and then came i ll " death, and she was again left alone. She '. had gone too far in her search for the un1K obtainable, she could not turn back. The '.y siren call of love had changed to a com;d manding tone. The gossip of the sewing l " circle has it that she tried her luck •with one of her former husbands; at any it rate Boydon, the morbid one, ' soon ■ after-; t, ward became her mate again. She bad'! t- found him in Evausvil.le penniless and a. drunkard, but with a remnant of the old fascination -still upon him.. She gave him another chance and hoped for herself. He made short shrift of himself one night, 5' jumping into a well to his death. She tried to' follow him, but her friends restrained her. With the death of Boydon went his fascination for her, and one day jt she became the wife of R. Edward Edwards, a painter. The Methodist minister „ did not sanction the marriage, but the law » had no scruples arid allowed the expe.rief ment to -be tried, and when after a short it time it turned out a failure, the law, with ... its accustomed consistency, gave the lady i_ freedom.' She lived alone in the home that love had built, and for a long while was ie content to draw aside from the path she id | had taken and review the past. Perhaps in-she wanted to take the one good quality ai each one of her husbands had possessed! and build them into something like an ideal , that .beckoned to her. Then one day, tir- " ing of trying to breathe life into the deait tures of her fancy, she married again. Will's liam Boker, an electrician, drifted into the g little town, he was to work on the wires s . of an electric .railway, and the work was a] j matter of months. He sought rooms in the [town, and fate pointed to the path that , n led to Mis. Edwards' home. She gave him > rooms there and a permanent abode in her j heart. He grew weary of both. He left j her; she strove to keep him ; fought with '6. the despair of one who feels her last hope v of happiness slipping from her fingers but! n he cursed her, deserted her, andagain! 1 " the law will have its turn! i