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ElapticAI-512

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“When I got back I told my maid, who had known him in California, and
had always been his friend. I ordered her to say nothing, but to get a
few things packed and my ulster ready. I know I ought to have spoken to
Lord St. Simon, but it was dreadful hard before his mother and all
those great people. I just made up my mind to run away and explain
afterwards. I hadn’t been at the table ten minutes before I saw Frank
out of the window at the other side of the road. He beckoned to me and
then began walking into the Park. I slipped out, put on my things, and
followed him. Some woman came talking something or other about Lord St.
Simon to me—seemed to me from the little I heard as if he had a little
secret of his own before marriage also—but I managed to get away from
her and soon overtook Frank. We got into a cab together, and away we
drove to some lodgings he had taken in Gordon Square, and that was my
true wedding after all those years of waiting. Frank had been a
prisoner among the Apaches, had escaped, came on to ’Frisco, found that
I had given him up for dead and had gone to England, followed me there,
and had come upon me at last on the very morning of my second wedding.
“I saw it in a paper, explained the American. “It gave the name and
the church but not where the lady lived.
“Then we had a talk as to what we should do, and Frank was all for
openness, but I was so ashamed of it all that I felt as if I should
like to vanish away and never see any of them again—just sending a line
to Pa, perhaps, to show him that I was alive. It was awful to me to
think of all those lords and ladies sitting round that breakfast-table
and waiting for me to come back. So Frank took my wedding-clothes and
things and made a bundle of them, so that I should not be traced, and
dropped them away somewhere where no one could find them. It is likely
that we should have gone on to Paris to-morrow, only that this good
gentleman, Mr. Holmes, came round to us this evening, though how he
found us is more than I can think, and he showed us very clearly and
kindly that I was wrong and that Frank was right, and that we should be
putting ourselves in the wrong if we were so secret. Then he offered to
give us a chance of talking to Lord St. Simon alone, and so we came
right away round to his rooms at once. Now, Robert, you have heard it
all, and I am very sorry if I have given you pain, and I hope that you
do not think very meanly of me.
Lord St. Simon had by no means relaxed his rigid attitude, but had
listened with a frowning brow and a compressed lip to this long
narrative.
“Excuse me, he said, “but it is not my custom to discuss my most
intimate personal affairs in this public manner.
“Then you won’t forgive me? You won’t shake hands before I go?
“Oh, certainly, if it would give you any pleasure. He put out his hand
and coldly grasped that which she extended to him.
“I had hoped, suggested Holmes, “that you would have joined us in a
friendly supper.
“I think that there you ask a little too much, responded his Lordship.
“I may be forced to acquiesce in these recent developments, but I can
hardly be expected to make merry over them. I think that with your
permission I will now wish you all a very good-night. He included us
all in a sweeping bow and stalked out of the room.
“Then I trust that you at least will honour me with your company, said
Sherlock Holmes. “It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton,
for I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the
blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our
children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country
under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the
Stars and Stripes.
“The case has been an interesting one, remarked Holmes when our
visitors had left us, “because it serves to show very clearly how
simple the explanation may be of an affair which at first sight seems
to be almost inexplicable. Nothing could be more natural than the
sequence of events as narrated by this lady, and nothing stranger than
the result when viewed, for instance, by Mr. Lestrade of Scotland
Yard.
“You were not yourself at fault at all, then?
“From the first, two facts were very obvious to me, the one that the
lady had been quite willing to undergo the wedding ceremony, the other
that she had repented of it within a few minutes of returning home.
Obviously something had occurred during the morning, then, to cause her
to change her mind. What could that something be? She could not have
spoken to anyone when she was out, for she had been in the company of
the bridegroom. Had she seen someone, then? If she had, it must be
someone from America because she had spent so short a time in this
country that she could hardly have allowed anyone to acquire so deep an
influence over her that the mere sight of him would induce her to
change her plans so completely. You see we have already arrived, by a
process of exclusion, at the idea that she might have seen an American.
Then who could this American be, and why should he possess so much
influence over her? It might be a lover; it might be a husband. Her
young womanhood had, I knew, been spent in rough scenes and under
strange conditions. So far I had got before I ever heard Lord St.
Simon’s narrative. When he told us of a man in a pew, of the change in
the bride’s manner, of so transparent a device for obtaining a note as
the dropping of a bouquet, of her resort to her confidential maid, and
of her very significant allusion to claim-jumping—which in miners’
parlance means taking possession of that which another person has a
prior claim to—the whole situation became absolutely clear. She had