A BELATED BRIDEGROOM
While the tragic commotion in the High Road was at its height a very different scene was being enacted at the fine old riverside church three-quarters of a mile away. A smart wedding is a rare event in the suburbs, and, despite the gloomy weather conditions—for a thick fog hung over the river and was now rapidly extending inland—an interested crowd assembled outside, watching the arrival of the many guests, dimly seen through the thickening murk, while along the Mall was a line of carriages and motors, looking like a file of fiery-eyed monsters, when the rapidly increasing darkness necessitated the lighting of their head-lamps.
The bevy of bridesmaids waited in the porch, chief among them Winnie Winston, a tall, handsome girl, with frank, laughing blue eyes. She alone of the little group appeared undaunted by the sinister gloom.
“For goodness’ sake, don’t look so lugubrious, girls!” she counselled, in a laughing undertone. “It’s too bad of the fog to come just now—after such a lovely morning too!—but it can’t be helped, and——”
She turned as someone touched her arm—her brother George, who was “best man” to-day, and even her high spirits were checked by his worried expression.
“I say, Win, Roger hasn’t turned up yet. What on earth’s to be done?”
“Not turned up! Why, where is he? Haven’t you been with him?”
“No. When I got to Starr’s rooms he wasn’t there. He left a message that Sir Robert had ’phoned for him, and if he didn’t get back by one o’clock he’d come straight on to the church, but he’s not here.”
“Perhaps there’s a fog in Town too,” she suggested, with a backward glance at the Rembrandtesque scene outside, where the shaft of light from the open door shone weirdly on the watching faces. “He’ll come directly—he must! Where’s Mr. Starr?”
“Haven’t seen him.”
“Then they’re probably together, or he may be coming on with Sir Robert and Lady Rawson. They’re not here yet, are they? What on earth can Sir Robert have wanted him for this morning? Horribly inconsiderate of him! Goodness, here’s Grace! Have you told the vicar that Roger hasn’t come? Then you’d better do so.”
She resumed her place as the bride advanced on her father’s arm, looking like a white ghost in her gleaming satin robe, with the filmy veil shrouding her bent head and her fair face.
“What’s the matter?” whispered the second brides maid.
“Nothing. S—sh!” answered Winnie, and breathed a silent thanksgiving as the choir struck up the hymn and began slowly to advance up the aisle, the bridal procession following. But her heart sank as she saw her brother hurry along the south aisle and out at the side door, evidently in the hope of meeting the tardy bridegroom.
Where could he be? And why hadn’t Austin Starr arrived? Not that Starr’s absence was anything extraordinary, for his exacting profession rendered him a socially erratic being. It was for that very reason that he had refused to fill the office of best man.
The hymn came to an end, the choir stood in their stalls, the bridal party halted at the chancel and there was a horrible pause, punctuated by the uneasy whispers exchanged by the guests.
The vicar came forward at length and proposed an adjournment to the vestry. He was no ordinary cleric, but a man with a fine, forceful, and magnetic personality, endowed, moreover, with consummate tact and good feeling; in brief, the Reverend Joseph Iverson was—and is—a Christian and gentleman in every sense of those often misused words.
“We can wait more comfortably in here,” he announced cheerily, as he brought forward a rush-bottomed chair for the bride, and in fatherly fashion, with a compelling hand on her shoulder, placed her in it.
“There, sit you down, and don’t be distressed, my dear child. I’m quite sure there’s no cause for alarm. Anyone—even a bridegroom—may be excused for losing his way in such a fog as this that has descended upon us. That’s the explanation of his absence, depend upon it. And he will arrive in another minute or two—in a considerable fluster, I’ll be bound, poor lad!”
His genial laugh reassured the others, who stood round, awkward, anxious, and embarrassed, as people naturally are at such a moment; but Grace looked up at him with a glance so tragic that it startled and distressed him.
He had known her ever since she was a little child, and never had he thought to see such an expression in her gentle grey eyes.
“It’s not that—not the fog,” she whispered, so low that he had to bend his head to catch the words. “Something terrible has happened; I feel it—I’m certain of it!”
Winnie Winston, standing close beside her, overheard the whisper. Her eyes met the vicar’s in mutual interrogation, perplexity, and dismay, and the same thought flashed through both their minds. Grace knew something, feared something; but what?
“Nonsense!” he responded. “You are nervous and upset—that’s only natural; but you mustn’t start imagining all sorts of things, for——”
“Here he is!” exclaimed Winnie in accents of fervent relief, as Roger, attended by George Winston, hurried into the vestry, hot and agitated, looking very unlike a bridegroom, especially as he was still wearing his ordinary morning suit.
He had eyes and speech only for his bride.
“Grace! Forgive me, darling! I couldn’t help it really. Sir Robert kept me, and then I couldn’t get a cab, and had to walk from—from the station.” She did not notice the momentary hesitation that marked the last words, though she remembered it afterwards. “I lost my way in the fog and thought I should never get here in time!”
“Just as I said!” remarked the vicar triumphantly. “Come along now, we’ve no time to lose.”
He led the way, a stately self-possessed figure, and the delayed service proceeded.
“Oh, Roger, I was so frightened!” Grace confided to her bridegroom as they drove slowly back through the gloom to her father’s house. “I felt sure something dreadful had happened to you; and the fog coming on like this too! It—it seems so unlucky, so sinister!”
She shivered, and he clasped her more closely, with masculine indifference to the danger of crumpling her finery.
“Cheer up, darling, it’s all right. We shall soon be out of the fog and into the sunshine,” he laughed. “And the fog wasn’t the chief cause of delay, after all. I should have got to the church before it came on if I hadn’t had to go to Sir Robert. I was awfully upset about it, but it couldn’t be helped.”
“Why, is anything wrong?”
“Afraid so. Some important papers have disappeared. I put them in the safe myself last night; the Rawsons were dining out and I stayed rather late, over these very papers. When Sir Robert went to get them this morning they were gone, though there was nothing to show that the safe had been tampered with; in fact, it hadn’t. It’s a most mysterious thing!”
He tried to speak lightly, but her sensitive ears caught the note of anxiety in his voice, and that queer sense of foreboding assailed her afresh.
“Oh, Roger, have they been found?”
“They hadn’t when I came away soon after twelve.”
“Then—then what will happen? Were they very important?”
“Very,” he replied, ignoring the first question, which was really unanswerable. “However, it’s no use worrying about them, darling; if they should have turned up Sir Robert is sure to come or telephone. Here we are!”
There was no time to spare for further thought or conjecture concerning the mystery of the missing papers until, an hour and a half later, they were on their way to Victoria, whirling rapidly along in a taxi, for the fog had lifted.
They had none too much time to get the train to Dover, where they intended to stay the night at the “Lord Warden” and cross to Calais next day, en route for Paris and the Riviera.
“The Rawsons didn’t come after all,” Grace remarked. “Mother was so disappointed, poor dear, for she had been telling every one about them, and then they never turned up! I’m not sorry though—at least about Lady Rawson. I don’t know what there is about her that always makes me think of a snake. That sounds very ungrateful when she gave me these lovely furs”—she glanced down at the costly chinchilla wrap and muff she wore, which had been Lady Rawson’s wedding gift—“but really I can’t help it.”
“Same here! And it really is curious considering she’s always been so jolly decent to us both. I wonder——”
He broke off, knitting his brows perplexedly, and as if in response to his unspoken thought Grace exclaimed:
“Roger, do you think she could have had anything to do with those missing papers?”
He glanced at her in astonishment.
“What makes you ask that, darling?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. It just flashed into my mind. But do you think so? Sir Robert didn’t ’phone to you, did he?”
“No. And I don’t know what to think about Lady Rawson. Oh, bother the papers; let’s forget all about them—for to-day, anyhow! I say, beloved, it doesn’t seem possible that we’re really married and off on our honeymoon, does it?”
She laughed, softly and shyly, and again the shadow fled for a time. What did anything matter save the fact that they were together, with all the world before them?
“Why don’t you smoke?” she asked presently. “I’m sure you’re dying for a cigarette, you poor boy; and I don’t believe you had anything to eat at the house—it was all such a fluster. We’ll have tea in the train, if George Winston has the sense to order a tea-basket for us.”
“Trust old George for that,” laughed Roger, feeling in one pocket after the other. “He never forgets anything. Now, where on earth is that cigarette case?”
“Did you have it this morning?”
“Of course I did. It’s the one you gave me at Christmas; I’ve never been without it since.”
“Perhaps it’s in your other suit,” she suggested; “the clothes you were to have worn.”
“No, it’s not, for I had it all right this morning; but I haven’t got it now, that’s certain!”
His face and manner expressed more concern than mere loss of a cigarette case would seem to warrant, even though it was one of her gifts to him.
“Never mind. I dare say it will turn up; and perhaps you’ll have time to get some at Victoria. We’re nearly there. Why, Roger, what’s the matter?”
The cab had halted by the station entrance in Wilton Road, waiting its turn to enter, and Roger, still fumbling in his pockets in the futile search for the cigarette case, suddenly leaned forward and stared out of the window, uttering a quick exclamation as of surprise and horror.
There was the usual bustling throng passing in and out of the station, and on the curb stood a newsboy vociferating monotonously,
“’Orrible murder of a Society lady; pyper—speshul.”
“What is it, Roger? Oh, what is it?” cried Grace, leaning forward in her turn and craning her pretty neck. The newsboy turned aside at that instant, and she did not see the placard he was exhibiting, but Roger had seen it:
LADY
RAWSON
MURDERED!
The great black letters seemed to hit him in the face. He felt for a moment as if he had received a physical and stunning blow.
“What is it?” Grace repeated, as the cab glided on.
“What? Oh, nothing at all, dear. I thought I saw someone I knew,” he muttered confusedly. But his face was ghastly, and little beads of sweat started out on his forehead.
“Here’s George!” he added, and Winston, who had gone on with the luggage, opened the door of the taxi. He also looked worried and flustered, though perhaps that was only natural since he greeted them with:
“Here you are at last! I thought you were going to miss the train. We’ve only a bare minute, but the luggage is in all right, and I’ve reserved a compartment. Come on.”
He hustled them on to the platform, and as Grace, bewildered and disturbed, entered the carriage, he detained Roger, ostensibly for the purpose of handing him the tickets.
“I say, have you heard the news—about Lady Rawson?”
“I saw a placard a moment ago, and I can’t credit it.”
“It’s true enough, I’m afraid. Awful, isn’t it? So mysterious too, and within a mile of the church where you were married—that makes it all the more horrible. Here’s a paper; don’t let Grace see it though; keep the whole thing from her as long as you can. It will upset——”
“Going on, sir? Step in, please.”
At the guard’s admonition Roger sprang in, the door was slammed, the whistle sounded, and as the train glided away George Winston ran alongside, waving his hat and shouting with an excellent assumption of gaiety.
“Good-bye, Grace—good-bye, old man. Good luck to you both.”
Roger leaned out of the window and nodded as if in responsive farewell, an action that gave him a few seconds in which to regain his self-possession and marshal his distracted thoughts.
George was right. The knowledge of the tragedy that necessarily would affect them both so strongly must be kept from Grace as long as possible. That it should have occurred on their wedding day, and that the victim should have been the woman who was to have been the principal wedding guest seemed monstrous, incredible. Yet it was true! Hastily he stuffed the evening paper Winston had given him into his pocket. If he had kept it in his hand he could not have resisted the impulse to read the fatal news, and he dare not trust himself to do that at present. Grace’s voice, with a new, nervous note in it, roused him to the necessity of facing the situation.
“Roger! Do take care, dear. You’ll lose your hat or——”
“Or my head? Mustn’t lose that, or it will be all up with me, considering that I lost my heart ages ago!”
He laughed as he settled himself in the seat opposite her, but he did not meet her eyes, dark with trouble and perplexity. She loved him with all the strength of her nature—a nature essentially sweet and pure and steadfast. She thought she understood his every mood; but now, on this supreme day that linked her life to his once and for all, his manner was so strange that her heart failed her.
His restless gaze lighted on a tea-basket and a pile of periodicals ranged on the cushions beside her.
“Hallo! So he thought of the tea after all. Good old George! Let’s have it, shall we, darling?”
He talked gaily, irresponsibly, as they drank their tea but she was not deceived—was more than ever certain that he was concealing something from her, though what it might be she could not imagine.
Presently she leant back in her corner and closed her eyes, but after an interval of silence she glanced up. Roger’s face was concealed behind a newspaper, which he appeared to be studying intently.
“Any news?” she asked. “I don’t believe I’ve looked at a paper for days.”
He did not lower the sheet immediately, and she noticed, half mechanically, that his grip on it tightened. She recalled later, as one does recall such trifles when circumstances have invested them with special significance, the little convulsive movement of his hands—fine, characteristic hands they were, strong and nervous.
“Nothing of any consequence; these rags are all alike,” he answered, as he tossed the paper out of the open window and moved impetuously to her side. “Grace! My own—my very own at last, there’s nothing in the world matters to you and me to-day except ourselves!”
He caught and held her in his embrace with a passion that increased her vague fears, for hitherto he had never been a demonstrative lover, devoted though they were to each other.
He kissed her lips, her eyes, her soft white throat, fiercely, hungrily.
“Roger, Roger, don’t; you—you frighten me!” she gasped, weak and breathless. “Oh——”
Her head drooped limply on to his shoulder. For a moment he thought she had actually fainted, and the shock restored his self-control.
“Forgive me, sweetheart!” he cried with quick compunction. “I must have been mad to upset you so. It’s been an upsetting sort of day, hasn’t it? But it’s all right now, really!”
He was holding her now firmly, tenderly, protectively, master of himself once more; and she nestled against him, revived and reassured. He was her own Roger again—the man whom she loved and trusted.
“It was silly of me,” she confessed, smiling up at him—an April smile, for the tears had risen to her sweet grey eyes. “And you’re right, dear; it has been an upsetting day, with the fog, and Sir Robert detaining you, and—and everything else. And you’re still worrying about those missing papers. I know you are, though you’re trying to pretend you’re not! Perhaps you think I might be—oh, I don’t know how to put it—jealous. No, that’s not the word I want. That you’re afraid I might be vexed because you could think of anything in the world except me, on this day, of all the days in our life! But it’s not so, Roger—really it isn’t! I want to share your troubles—I mean to share them. I—I’m your wife.”
Too deeply moved for words he held her to his heart, and again their lips met, though this time the kiss was reverent as a sacrament.