We dashed home to get news of Diana, and it was a relief to find
everything decorous and apparently serene at the house. We were informed
by a band of footmen, hired with powder and pomatum inclusive, for the
occasion, that the bride had arrived safely. There was no stare of
consternation or half-hidden horror on any face. But in the
flower-decked drawing-room, with its effective marble pillars (Di and
Father had taken the house on the strength of that drawing-room, so well
designed for a wedding reception), the bride and bridegroom had not yet
stationed themselves to smile and be congratulated, although guests had
begun to arrive. Father, however, was there, at his best and reassuring
everybody. Diana had been a "little upset by the fright, don't you know,
and Vandyke was looking after her"; but it was nothing--nothing at all.
She would be down presently.
"What is it, Father? What did happen?" I found a chance to whisper; but
to my surprise he gave me for answer only a frown which seemed
inexplicably to say, "Whatever it is, _you'd_ better not ask! Don't
pretend innocence, it doesn't suit you."
"Do find out something from somebody," I said hastily to Tony, and ran
upstairs in search of Kitty Main, who, having deserted us to return home
with Father, was nevertheless not to be found in the drawing-room. She
was sure to know everything, I thought, and delighted to talk. But the
first person I met was Sidney Vandyke in the act of closing Diana's door
and coming out into the hall. Seeing me, a set and gloomy expression,
most unsuitable to a bridegroom, changed to a look of actual fury. If I
had been a small tame dog which had unexpectedly sprung up to bite him,
he could not have glared more venomously.
Since he had come to London we had met almost every day, and when
necessary I had been as dully polite as a book on etiquette. But only
when necessary. At other times I had effaced myself; now, though I was
keen for news of Di, I didn't care to get it from him, especially after
that look. Never since the episode of the photograph in camp at El Paso
had I of my own free will begun a conversation with Major Vandyke, and
it was now my intention to wait until he was out of the way before going
to Kitty or Diana. But when I would quietly have slid past the
bridegroom in the corridor, he stopped me.
"You've always been the enemy," he said in a tone of repressed rage,
subdued to reach my ears only, "but I did think you fought fair. I
didn't expect you to hit me in the back--and strike your sister, too, on
her wedding day. You're a cruel and cowardly little enemy, after all.
And let me tell you this: neither of us will forgive you as long as we
live."
I stared at him in amazement. "I don't know what you mean!"
"I shouldn't lie on top of the rest, if I were you," he sneered. "I
forbid you to go to Di. She's borne enough. A little more, and she'd not
be able to face those people downstairs."
"I tell you again, and I don't lie, because Eagle March himself taught
me to speak the truth," I said, "that I've no idea what you're driving
at. I have done nothing, except live. I don't know what's happened. I
want to know."
"You shan't have the satisfaction of hearing anything from me!" Sidney
flung the words at my head. Then he turned on his heel, and opened
Diana's door again without knocking. I think he would have shut it in my
face; but Kitty Main was ready to come out, and must have had her hand
on the knob when it was snatched from her fingers.
"Oh, Major!" she exclaimed. "I was hurrying to call you back. Di thinks
she's strong enough to go down now."
The door remained open, and I saw Di sitting on a sofa just opposite,
with an empty champagne glass in her hand. Her white face and white
figure in her wedding dress stood out like a wonderfully painted
portrait against the fashionable black chintz wall-covering of the
bedroom. Seeing her husband, she stood up and came forward, setting the
wineglass on the table as she passed. "I'm all right now," she said, and
then caught sight of me.
"Oh, cruel!" she reproached me. "Was it _he_ who asked you not to tell,
or was it your own thought?"
"He?" I echoed. "You all talk in riddles. You accuse me of something,
and won't explain what it is."
"You _must_ know!" Di exclaimed. "But I can't talk about it now, or I
shall break down again. Thanks for the champagne, Sid. You were right;
it did me good. Now we'll go."
She brushed past me in the corridor, her head turned away; and as I
stared stupidly after her and Major Vandyke, suddenly my eyes fell on a
small but conspicuous spot of red that marred the lustre of Di's silver
train. It looked like a drop of blood.
When the two had gone, I pounced upon Mrs. Main. "For pity's sake,
explain the mystery!"
"Oh, it was dreadful for a few minutes," she said. "There was nearly the
most _awful_ accident. Of course you came out too late to see. But--you
_do know who was in the church_?--at least, I suppose he must have been
there."
I started as if she had boxed my ears, for without telling, I knew all
she meant. I remembered the odd feeling I had had of some one trying to
call me, as if in a dream; and how I had looked behind me in vain. Tony,
too, had been very strange. He had begun to say something and had
stopped in haste. He had promised to explain later, but coming home I
had forgotten to ask him. There had been the excitement about the
supposed accident to Diana, and my thoughts had clung to that.
Now I realized that there was only _one person_ who might have been at
St. George's with my secret connivance, whose presence there Sidney
Vandyke would furiously resent: Eagle March.
Kitty was looking at me curiously, almost appealingly, and I was vexed
with myself for blushing. "I do not know," I answered steadily. "I might
guess--but almost surely I should guess wrong. Tell me who, in all that
crowd, it was worth Sidney's while to make this fuss about."
"Well," said Kitty, who being far from brave is easily abashed, "I'm not
sure he _was_ inside the church, but anyhow he was _outside_, because I
saw him the instant before he seized the horses' heads. And then----"
"Seized the horses' heads? But who--who?"
"Captain March. Of course it was he who saved Diana and Major Vandyke.
At least I think he deserves so much credit, and Di would think it, too,
if she were left to herself. But Major Vandyke says the whole thing was
arranged; that it was Captain March who planned--to--to----"
"He's sure to say something horrible. But begin at the beginning!"
"I can't now, dear," said Kitty nervously. "Di and Sidney will be so
cross if I stay up here talking to you. I really must go down; but
you're sure to hear everything."
I didn't insist, for I could not keep her against her will; and besides,
it would be better to have the story from some one who could tell things
more clearly. Down I flew to find Tony, whom I could trust to have
commandeered some news for me by this time. Already the drawing-room was
crammed with perfumed people and too fragrant flowers, and a babel of
chatter. I should have had to knock fat old ladies and thin old
gentlemen about like ninepins to sort out from among bonneted and bald
pates the inconspicuous brown head I sought, and my search was checked
constantly by well-meaning creatures who pined to tell me how pretty the
wedding had been, or how much I had grown since they saw me last. Now
and then, however, I picked up a wisp of information.
"What a close shave there was of a tragedy! But all's well that ends
well," said Lady O'Harrel, a distant cousin of ours who had ignored the
connection until it advertised itself in Norfolk Street and Park Lane.
"Who was the man who seized the horses' heads when they bolted? I didn't
see him myself, but I heard some one say he looked like a gentleman."
I answered as if I had the whole affair at my fingers' ends: "It was
Captain March of the American army, the flying man who used to be so
popular here last summer."
"Dear me!" breathed Lady O'Harrel, who had two sons of her own in the
British army. "_Fancy!_ Why, I heard Gerald speaking of him only the
other day. He heard that Captain March had been cashiered for something
or other so _dreadful_ it couldn't be spoken of. The story's going the
rounds of London now. I'm not sure Gerald didn't get it from your
brother-in-law the night he asked Major Vandyke to dine at the Rag. How
strange Captain March should have been the one to save them!"
"He was not cashiered," I passionately protested. "He did nothing
dreadful. It was----" I stopped myself on the verge of saying that it
was Sidney Vandyke himself who deserved to bear the shame he would
thrust on another. But there are some things you cannot do! One of these
is to inform a guest at your sister's wedding that the bridegroom is a
villain. I had to choke back my rage against Sidney at its hottest, like
Vesuvius swallowing its own lava, and resolve to fight the battle of
Eagle March only on the lines of _noblesse oblige_--the lines on which
he would choose to fight, no matter what the provocative.
At last I unearthed Tony, talking to the prettiest bridesmaid. But
because she was the prettiest, and other men were glad to snap her up, I
disentangled Tony with ease. "I've been dying for you!" I said.
"I don't flatter myself too much on that," he replied. "It's my story
you want. Well, I've been busy putting things together, and I guess it's
only the two ends of the jig-saw that are missing now. I warn you,
Peggy, I don't know how Eagle March got into church, or where from, or
what became of him at the end."
"Perhaps I shall hear from him," I said; yet I spoke mechanically and
with little hope. I felt that the time Eagle had fixed for our meeting
was not yet.
"Perhaps you will," echoed Tony. "He may want to explain, when he knows
_you_ know he was there, why he turned up at Lady Di's wedding: that it
wasn't just vulgar curiosity, or the wish to give her a start that made
him do it."
"He wouldn't need to explain to you, or me, or any one who knew him," I
answered. "That goes without saying. Whatever his reason was, it was
good. But are you sure he was in the church?"
"Well, you remember when I asked why you kept turning your head, and you
told me it was because you felt some one 'looking for you?'"
"Yes! And you said 'By Jove! I wonder if it's possible----' Then you
shut up like an oyster."
"I thought it wouldn't do to go further, then, and excite you for
nothing, maybe. I did promise to tell you afterward, but coming here we
had the accident to talk about, and you forgot----"
"Never mind excuses. Tell me now. Had you seen him?"
"I wasn't quite sure--thought I might have made a mistake. Away back
near the door as we came in I caught sight of a chap who reminded me of
March. But I never saw him before in London togs, you know, and it was
dark in the church, with all that rain coming down outside. I couldn't
tell for certain, it seemed so dashed improbable that he should be
there. Even if he was in London, he wouldn't have been likely to get a
card----"
"A card, indeed! Do you think any one with eyes in his head would ask
Eagle March to show a _card_?"
"Well, anyhow," Tony defended himself, "why should he want to poke his
nose in there? I judged him by the way _I_ should feel, supposing it was
you being spliced to some other fellow. I'd sooner be at the North or
South Pole than have to watch it done, unless I could bounce out with an
impediment why you shouldn't lawfully be joined together."
"I can think of reasons why a man might--might steel himself to see a
woman he'd loved married to another man," I said; though in truth, I
couldn't see distinctly, and I wondered if the day would come when the
mystery of Eagle's presence at Diana's wedding would clear itself up.
There was just one thing I could count on, though! It would never be
from my trying to find out, but only when, and if, Eagle wished me to
know. Meanwhile, I trusted him as always, and hardly needed to be told
that the man in the back seat at St. George's hadn't flaunted himself in
a conspicuous position.
"He was wedged in between two women's hats," Tony went on. "I'd never
have spotted him, if I hadn't been rubber-necking at the crowd, sort of
counting scalps. That's not done by brides and grooms in our class of
life, so March might have felt as safe as a hermit crab, as far as
giving the willies to Lady Di or Vandyke was concerned. But just when I
was rubbering, he happened to shove his head forward between hats to
squint at you."
"Oh, Tony!" I couldn't help breaking in. "He was looking at _me_?"
"That's the way it struck me. But the ladies with the hats were after
the same thing, so they closed their ranks in front of March's nose, and
swamped him. That's why I didn't get the chance to make sure whether it
was he or his double. I rubbered some more, to see, but there was only a
massed formation of hats where the face had been. There's nothing like
hatpins to drive a man to the wall."
I shivered a little with the same electric thrill which had passed
through me in church. What a soulless thing I had been not to know,
despite a barrier of a hundred hats, by instinct whose eyes had called
mine. But Tony was going mildly on.
"That's all, about the church," he said. "March must have been one of
the first to get out, or he wouldn't have been on the stage in time for
the next act. Sounds like a kind of melodrama now, doesn't it? Act one,
scene one, inside St. George's, Hanover Square; the wedding. Scene two,
outside the church door. Only, in a melodrama, the bridegroom would be
the hero, and the other fellow the villain. There's no villain in this
play."
"Oh, _isn't_ there?" I sneered. "We won't argue the question, though. I
suppose the new motor car didn't come after all, as I hear things about
runaway horses."
"Then you have heard already? What's the good of my repeating----"
"No--no! I've heard scarcely anything. I depended on you. I was sure you
wouldn't fail me."
That encouraged Tony, and soon I knew what he knew. He had been pumping
Captain Beatty, and had learned from him how, before leaving the Savoy
for St. George's, Sidney had received a wire from his chauffeur. It said
that the Grayles-Grice had safely arrived by a later train than
promised, but that something was wrong with the motor. Better not depend
on the car for church, though it would be pretty sure to be all right to
go away in after the reception. This was a blow to Sidney, because he
had grown quite superstitious on the subject of reaching the house from
St. George's. He had told Captain Beatty about repeated dreams of a bomb
startling a pair of horses. And a Bond Street clairvoyant had seen in
her crystal a picture of him and a woman in white driving away from a
church in a black-draped hearse. Captain Beatty had mentioned casually
to Tony that Vandyke used to have as good nerves as the next man, but
that he'd got "jumpy" lately, and Beatty wondered whether it was like
that with all fellows who were going to be married.
The only thing to do had been to order a motor or carriage to come to
St. George's for the bride and bridegroom. Di, appealed to by telephone,
preferred a carriage. A smart-looking one had been sent accordingly, but
the horses were fresh and had begun to dance impatiently even before
Diana and Sidney came out of the church. The thin little coachman had
difficulty in holding them in when it thundered. By the time Di and her
husband appeared, the pair were prancing on their hind legs, and the
crowd on the pavement waiting for the bridal couple were pushing
nervously back, out of the way of threatening hoofs. Di had hesitated
for an instant, but the coachman had assured Major Vandyke that the
horses were only "playing a bit," and were as gentle as lambs. They'd
come down to business the minute they were allowed to start. So Sidney
had put Diana into the carriage and was in the act of getting in
himself, when a man on a motor cycle suddenly tore round the corner into
Hanover Square with the noise of ten thousand demons. That was the
"limit" for the horses, said Tony. They bolted, with Di shrieking and
trying to pull her husband into the brougham, Sidney clinging
ignominiously to the door, and to a strap inside.
The policeman and another man or two ran forward, but the screaming of
Diana and dozens of women on the pavement frightened the creatures more
and more. The coachman lost control; the policeman was kicked, and
stumbled back; the others couldn't get to the horses, which were bolting
across the street; and in another minute the bridegroom would certainly
have been flung down, if a man just out of church hadn't made a dash to
the rescue. The next thing any one knew, he was hanging on to the
animals' heads like grim death, and bringing them down from their hind
feet on to all fours again. He was dragged a few yards before a couple
of policemen could get to his side; but meanwhile, as he clung to the
horses, like a brake on their speed, the brougham steadied itself,
Sidney contrived to crawl inside and bang the door shut, for his own
protection and Di's. It all happened in a minute; and as the hatless man
held on to the horses' heads, Captain Beatty in great astonishment
recognized him as Captain March. It was Eagle who stopped the horses;
but as the two policemen sprang to his aid, and staggering back he let
go his hold, he must have been kicked by one of the beasts. What Captain
Beatty did see was Eagle's forehead streaming with blood, and when the
rescuer had hurried away, insisting that the wound was of no importance,
the bride was helped out of the carriage by the bridegroom and into a
closed motor car which some one hastily offered. In the street where it
had all happened was a stain of blood, Captain March's no doubt; but in
the excitement of changing the bride from one vehicle to the other he
had time to vanish as completely as if he'd wrapped himself in an
invisible cloak.
"Just as well, too, considering who he was, and who he's saved," Tony
finished ungrammatically. "It would have been mighty awkward for all
parties if he'd fallen down in a faint, and Lord Ballyconal out of
gratitude had had to put him up here, where the wedding party's going
on. Or even if he'd been all right, but coralled by the crowd, the bride
would have been called upon to address him as 'my preserver'--what?
Can't you see Vandyke obliged to shower blessings on March for saving
both their lives?"
"And yet, how awful that he should go without a word of thanks--go
wounded and bleeding!" The thought made me choke.
"I guess March is a bit like a sick cat that way," said Tony dryly.
"He'd rather crawl off and get well alone than be bothered by sympathy,
even yours, my child. That's like him. And like him to save the very man
who's spoilt his life. But blest if I can see that being there in church
was like him, no matter what you say! Anyhow, it was a blamed good thing
for every one concerned that he just dropped from heaven like manna in
the nick of time, and then was absorbed back into clouds again, blood
and all."
"Diana's dress must have been baptized in that blood," I muttered, for
my own benefit, but Tony caught me up. "Gee _whiz_! did she get her gown
spattered with it?"
"A drop or two on her silver train. Poetic justice! The blood had been
spilt for her."
"Dashed bad luck to get it on her wedding dress, though, I've heard
superstitious folks say--but what rotten nonsense to talk like this to
you! Of course, there's nothing in it."
"I'm not sure how Di would feel if she knew. But _I_ feel as if a drop
of Eagle March's blood would be like the blood of the prince in a fairy
story I used to love. Just the faintest smear of it brought fortune for
the heroine and all her family," I said. "Di doesn't know. I didn't tell
what I saw. And would you believe this, Tony? My noble brother-in-law
pretends to believe that Eagle got up the whole scene, like a plot in
that melodrama you were talking about. I suppose he'd like Di to think
that Eagle bribed the livery people to send nervous horses and a weak
coachman, and that he hired a motor cyclist to swing round the corner on
a cue at the right instant, in order that he himself might play the
gallant hero. Rather elaborate! But that shows how a man judges another
by what he would do in his place! Isn't it a proof that the El Paso
affair was a plot--a plot Sidney accuses Eagle of revenging in this wild
way?"
"That's quite a neat suggestion," said Tony, smiling an
"indulge-the-poor-child" smile which made me want to box his
ears--though not hard. "I don't think you need be afraid, though," he
hurried on, to calm me. "Vandyke won't openly accuse March of anything
more, I guess, unless in the bosom of his family where it won't do much
harm. If he dealt out any 'plot' talk of that sort, he'd make himself a
laughing-stock, and he wouldn't stand for that. He'll just try to forget
the whole business, and help other folks to forget--cut it out."
"It will be better for him!" I said, as fiercely as a small dog growling
in the kennel of a big one. "But Di and Sidney, too, both accuse _me_ of
being in the 'plot.' They say I knew Eagle was in England, and secretly
invited him to the wedding. I haven't even heard from him since we came
back from America."
"Haven't you?" Tony's face brightened. "Well, I shall never cease
wondering what brought March to the church, till I know--which may be
never. Unless you tell me when you hear."
"_If_ I hear!"
"I guess you're sure to sooner or later. He must know now that he was
recognized. No use hiding his head in the sand! He'll want to explain
why he--er--well, sort of intruded."
"No, he wouldn't need to explain," I reiterated. "What's the use of
friendship, if it doesn't understand and take things for granted?
And--if Eagle never writes, I shall know he doesn't want me to seek him.
So I won't do that, even though he has been hurt for us, and maybe is
suffering."
"You're a soldier," Tony complimented me. "March would be just the man
to appreciate that if he could hear you now."
"I believe he would understand me as I understand him," I said. "Still
it is hard not to know if he's badly hurt."
"By the way he shot through the crowd like a streak of greased
lightning, I should say it wasn't fatal," Tony cheered me. "But if you'd
like to have me do a bit of secret service work and 'phone to a few
hotels or hospitals----"
I shook my head decidedly. "I know the hotel where he goes," I said. "I
shan't send. I think if he were very badly wounded, he _would_ let me
know. He'd trust me to stand between him and--the others. Now--let's go
and see Di cut her wedding cake. You can have a piece to dream on if you
like."
"No good!" said Tony. "I always dream of you anyhow, when I dream at
all--except when I eat welsh rabbit: then I dream of the devil." But he
went with me like a lamb, and we spoke no more of Captain March.