“Thanks to an informal rehearsal some days before, the ceremony went off without a hitch. The officiating clergy were the Venerable Archdeacon Wealthy, D. D., assisted by the Rev. Josiah Golightly and other members of the numerous staff of All Saints'. The service, which was fully choral, was under the able direction of the well-known organist and choirmaster, Mr. Carl Koenig, F. R. C. O., and the choir consisted of twenty adult and forty boy voices. On the arrival of the bride a procession was formed at the west entrance and proceeded up to the chancel, singing 'The voice that breathed o'er Eden——”
“Poor Polly!” thought Glory.
“The bride wore a duchess satin gown trimmed with chiffon and Brussels lace, and having a long train hung from the shoulders. Her tulle veil was fastened with a ruby brooch and with sprays of orange blossom sent specially from the Riviera, and her necklace consisted of a rope of graduated pearls fully a yard long, and understood to have belonged to the jewel case of Catharine of Russia. She carried a bouquet of flowers (the gift of the bridegroom) brought from Florida, the American home of her family. The bride's mother wore—— The bridesmaids were dressed——Mr. Horatio Drake acted as best man——”
Glory drew her breath as with a spasm and threw down the newspaper. How blind she had been, how vain, how foolish! She had told John Storm that Drake was only a good friend to her, meaning him to understand that thus far she allowed him to go and no farther. But there was a whole realm of his life into which he did not ask her to enter. The “notable persons in politics and society,” “the bridesmaids,” these made up his real sphere, his serious scene. Other women were his friends, companions, equals, intimates, and when he stood in the eye of the world it was they who stood beside him. And she? She was his hobby. He came to her in his off hours. She filled up the under side of his life.
With a crushing sense of humiliation she was folding up the newspaper to send it downstairs when her eye was arrested by a paragraph in small type in the corner. It was headed “Shocking occurrence at a fashionable wedding.”
“Oh, good gracious!” she cried. A glance had shown her what it was. It was a report of Polly's suicide.
“At a fashionable wedding at a West-End church on Saturday” (no names) “a young woman who had been sitting in the nave was seen to rise and attempt to step into the aisle, as if with the intention of crushing her way out, when she fell back in convulsions, and on being removed was found to be dead. Happily, the attention of the congregation was at the moment directed to the bride and bridegroom, who were returning from the vestry with the bridal party behind them, and thus the painful incident made no sensation among the crowded congregation. The body was removed to the parish mortuary, and from subsequent inquiries it transpired that death had been due to poison self-administered, and that the deceased was Elizabeth Anne Love (twenty-four), of no occupation, but formerly a nurse—a circumstance which had enabled her to procure half a grain of liquor strychninae on her own signature at a chemist's where she had been known.”
“O God! O God!” Glory understood everything now. “I've a great mind to go to All Saints' and shame them—Oh, it isn't the police I'm afraid of.” Polly's purpose was clear. She had intended to fall dead at the feet of the bride and bridegroom and make them walk over her body. Poor, foolish, ineffectual Polly! Her very ghost must be ashamed of the failure of her revenge. Not a ripple of sensation on Saturday, and this morning only a few obscure lines in little letters!
Oh, it was hideous! The poor thing's vengeance was theatrical and paltry, but what of the man, wherever he was? What did he think of himself now, with his millions and his murder? Yes, his murder, for what else was it?
An hour later Glory was ringing the bell of a little house in St. John's Wood whereof the upper blinds were drawn. The grating of the garden door slid back and an untidy head looked out.