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ElapticAI-512

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“I fail to see that anyone is to blame. I can hardly see how the lady
could have acted otherwise, though her abrupt method of doing it was
undoubtedly to be regretted. Having no mother, she had no one to advise
her at such a crisis.
“It was a slight, sir, a public slight, said Lord St. Simon, tapping
his fingers upon the table.
“You must make allowance for this poor girl, placed in so unprecedented
a position.
“I will make no allowance. I am very angry indeed, and I have been
shamefully used.
“I think that I heard a ring, said Holmes. “Yes, there are steps on
the landing. If I cannot persuade you to take a lenient view of the
matter, Lord St. Simon, I have brought an advocate here who may be more
successful. He opened the door and ushered in a lady and gentleman.
“Lord St. Simon, said he “allow me to introduce you to Mr. and Mrs.
Francis Hay Moulton. The lady, I think, you have already met.
At the sight of these newcomers our client had sprung from his seat and
stood very erect, with his eyes cast down and his hand thrust into the
breast of his frock-coat, a picture of offended dignity. The lady had
taken a quick step forward and had held out her hand to him, but he
still refused to raise his eyes. It was as well for his resolution,
perhaps, for her pleading face was one which it was hard to resist.
“You’re angry, Robert, said she. “Well, I guess you have every cause
to be.
“Pray make no apology to me, said Lord St. Simon bitterly.
“Oh, yes, I know that I have treated you real bad and that I should
have spoken to you before I went; but I was kind of rattled, and from
the time when I saw Frank here again I just didn’t know what I was
doing or saying. I only wonder I didn’t fall down and do a faint right
there before the altar.
“Perhaps, Mrs. Moulton, you would like my friend and me to leave the
room while you explain this matter?
“If I may give an opinion, remarked the strange gentleman, “we’ve had
just a little too much secrecy over this business already. For my part,
I should like all Europe and America to hear the rights of it. He was
a small, wiry, sunburnt man, clean-shaven, with a sharp face and alert
manner.
“Then I’ll tell our story right away, said the lady. “Frank here and I
met in ’84, in McQuire’s camp, near the Rockies, where Pa was working a
claim. We were engaged to each other, Frank and I; but then one day
father struck a rich pocket and made a pile, while poor Frank here had
a claim that petered out and came to nothing. The richer Pa grew the
poorer was Frank; so at last Pa wouldn’t hear of our engagement lasting
any longer, and he took me away to ’Frisco. Frank wouldn’t throw up his
hand, though; so he followed me there, and he saw me without Pa knowing
anything about it. It would only have made him mad to know, so we just
fixed it all up for ourselves. Frank said that he would go and make his
pile, too, and never come back to claim me until he had as much as Pa.
So then I promised to wait for him to the end of time and pledged
myself not to marry anyone else while he lived. ‘Why shouldn’t we be
married right away, then,’ said he, ‘and then I will feel sure of you;
and I won’t claim to be your husband until I come back?’ Well, we
talked it over, and he had fixed it all up so nicely, with a clergyman
all ready in waiting, that we just did it right there; and then Frank
went off to seek his fortune, and I went back to Pa.
“The next I heard of Frank was that he was in Montana, and then he went
prospecting in Arizona, and then I heard of him from New Mexico. After
that came a long newspaper story about how a miners’ camp had been
attacked by Apache Indians, and there was my Frank’s name among the
killed. I fainted dead away, and I was very sick for months after. Pa
thought I had a decline and took me to half the doctors in ’Frisco. Not
a word of news came for a year and more, so that I never doubted that
Frank was really dead. Then Lord St. Simon came to ’Frisco, and we came
to London, and a marriage was arranged, and Pa was very pleased, but I
felt all the time that no man on this earth would ever take the place
in my heart that had been given to my poor Frank.
“Still, if I had married Lord St. Simon, of course I’d have done my
duty by him. We can’t command our love, but we can our actions. I went
to the altar with him with the intention to make him just as good a
wife as it was in me to be. But you may imagine what I felt when, just
as I came to the altar rails, I glanced back and saw Frank standing and
looking at me out of the first pew. I thought it was his ghost at
first; but when I looked again there he was still, with a kind of
question in his eyes, as if to ask me whether I were glad or sorry to
see him. I wonder I didn’t drop. I know that everything was turning
round, and the words of the clergyman were just like the buzz of a bee
in my ear. I didn’t know what to do. Should I stop the service and make
a scene in the church? I glanced at him again, and he seemed to know
what I was thinking, for he raised his finger to his lips to tell me to
be still. Then I saw him scribble on a piece of paper, and I knew that
he was writing me a note. As I passed his pew on the way out I dropped
my bouquet over to him, and he slipped the note into my hand when he
returned me the flowers. It was only a line asking me to join him when
he made the sign to me to do so. Of course I never doubted for a moment
that my first duty was now to him, and I determined to do just whatever
he might direct.