AND MISS CECIL STICKNEY
APPALLING TRAGEDY
And soon a girl ran in, gasping: “Miss Frankl!—this is too awful—your father—”
The news, having been flashed to Paris by Mackay-Bennett cable, now appeared in detail after the New York Herald's French edition, and Rebekah's eyes ran wildly over details as to the “bevy of beauty”, daughters of “the Thirty-four”, and the church of waiting ladies, the carpeted path between palms and exotics, and how the ticket-holders heard the organ tell the Cantilenet Nuptiale and Bennett's Minuet; and then the multitudinous stir: behold the bridegroom cometh!—the little necessary bridegroom of no importance, and then the white entry of bride and bridal train, while the choir knelt to sing “O Perfect Love”.
Perfect love, however, was hardly the order of that day, but rather perfect hate: for in Madison Square—the church being at the upper end of Fifth Avenue—a mob was being harangued on the subject of this very wedding: and when they heard and realized the thing that was being done before their eyes they were swept as by a wind of fire, and under its impulse set out like some swollen Rhone with a rushing sound to pounce upon the church, full of perfect hate: and the choir sang “O perfect love”.
What happened now was described as a nightmare. The same elemental instincts of the Stone Age which had exhibited themselves in the $500-worth of food wrought in another form, but with no less savagery, in assassins as in victims: and a massacre ensued, bride and bridegroom passing away like bubbles, of “the Thirty-four” five only escaping. The report ended with the words: “The ringleaders have been arrested; quiet reigns through the city”; then a list of the guests, with asterisks indicating those killed.
Rebekah searched for her father's name, and when she became certain that it was not there, her lips moved in thanksgiving.
But since Frankl was not at the wedding, where, then, was Frankl? She counted the days on her fingers: he could not have been late.
Unless there had been an accident to his ship....
Her brows knit a little; she peered into the fire: and thought of the Boodah....