CHAPTER XIII.
FORSAKEN AT THE ALTAR.
Mrs. Dalrymple, throwing back her heavy veil for air, gasped with surprise and wonder.
She could not have dreamed of seeing Frank Laurier at the funeral services at the Van Dorn vault when it was the hour for his wedding at old Trinity.
Yet there he stood in their midst, his handsome head bowed reverently, his face pale, his eyes heavy with grief—he who should be so happy in this his bridal hour!
Catching her startled glance, he moved to her side, whispering sadly:
“I could not stay away, but I shall be in time to meet Cora at Trinity. Ah, how my heart aches with this cruel blow! Let me love you as a son for her dear sake!”—he paused, with a long-drawn sigh, for the venerable bishop was beginning the last sad rites: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Soon they had to come away and leave her there alone, sweet Jessie, among her dead kindred, she whose brief life had been so sad and lonely, ending with so cruel a tragedy.
Frank Laurier, accompanied by his best man, Ernest Noel, returned to their coupé, and outside the cemetery limits ordered the coachman to proceed as fast as possible to old Trinity to meet the bridal party.
Noel thought that this attendance on a funeral in the very hour of his marriage was a very strange freak on the part of his friend, and he was puzzled yet more by the gravity and sadness of Laurier’s face as they drove swiftly along toward the church.
But having no clew to the enigma, he tried to dismiss it from his mind, glancing at his watch and saying:
“By George, we are due at Trinity now, and it would be shocking to get there late—a slight the bride would not easily forgive!”
He was astonished that Laurier made no reply, sitting pale and grave and seemingly indifferent in his seat as if he had not heard.
Noel shrugged his shoulders, and called to the coachman:
“Drive as fast as you dare. We are already late!”
Thereupon the horse was urged to a higher rate of speed, and presently there was a commotion outside, and the coupé stopped.
“What is the matter?” inquired Noel, putting his head outside, and thus encountering a burly policeman.
“You are under arrest for fast driving,” grunted the guardian of the law.
“But, good heavens, man, you must not detain us. It is necessary for us to drive fast in order to reach old Trinity for a wedding ceremony,” expostulated Noel.
“Wedding or no wedding, all three of you must come to the station house with me,” answered the policeman, who was both surly and dull-witted.
Laurier suddenly aroused himself to the situation, and united his expostulations to Noel’s, but all to no avail.
The policeman would not hear to letting them go. He said to himself he would “teach them young bloods a lesson.” He did not credit at all the story of the wedding party waiting at the church.
Laurier, suddenly realizing the situation, and thinking of Cora’s anger and mortification at having to wait for him so long, grew frantic.
He whispered to Noel:
“Would it be any use to offer him a bribe to let us go?”
“No, he is so malicious he would get us indicted for trying to bribe him in the discharge of duty.”
Laurier turned to the stubborn policeman, asking politely:
“Could you not take our names and let us report to the police court to-morrow?”
“They may do that at the station house, but I am obliged to arrest you and take you there. Come, the longer you parley the more time you are losing! I’ll just jump up with your driver so we can lose no time.”
Noel whispered excitedly:
“Suppose we cut and run while he is getting on the box? We could easily get a cab.”
“Done!” And they slipped out unperceived on either side, to the vast amusement of a good-natured crowd that had collected on the corner.
Unfortunately the policeman caught the snickering at his expense, just as the coupé drove off, and turned his red head curiously back, at once catching sight of the fugitives.
“Stop!” he shouted angrily, springing down to follow.
A hot chase ensued, but as the sympathies of the spectators were all with the handsome young men, the poor policeman got no assistance, and presently he was outdistanced by the agile sprinters, and gave up the pursuit just a minute too soon, for, in turning a corner at breakneck speed, Frank Laurier collided with a bicycle and went down like a rock.
“Good heavens!” cried Ernest Noel, stopping short in horror above the wreck, the shattered wheel, and the two prostrate men.
They had both sustained injuries, but the rider directly got up on his feet, and declared himself all right save for a few bruises.
Not so with Frank Laurier, who lay like one dead before them, with his fair, handsome face upturned to the light, his eyes closed, and a dark bruise on the side of his temple, showing where he had struck it in falling against the curbstone. All efforts to revive him failed, and a physician who was called declared it was a case of concussion of the brain and that the patient must be removed at once to Bellevue Hospital.
“No, no—he is”—began Ernest Noel quickly, but at that moment the red-headed policeman trotted on the scene with a bewildered air, awakening such instant fierce resentment in his breast that he sprang at him, exclaiming hotly:
“You red-headed villain, you are the cause of all this trouble! I should like to throttle you!”
Whereupon the indignant officer raised his club and brought it down on the cranium of the hot-headed young man with such telling effect that he was quite stunned, and fell an easy victim to arrest, being removed in an ambulance to the station house, while his poor friend, whose identity was equally unknown, was taken to Bellevue Hospital.
What an ending to a day that had been anticipated for months with the ardor of a true lover. Instead of wedding bells the slow procession to the grave, and now—far from the festal scene, alone among strangers who did not suspect his identity with the young millionaire Frank Laurier, terribly injured, perhaps unto death, how strange and sad a fate!
And the bride—poor girl!—so beautiful, so proud, so imperious, who can picture the depths of her pain and humiliation, waiting more than an hour at the thronged, fashionable church for a laggard bridegroom who never came, who sent no excuse, who left her to suffer under one of the cruelest blows woman’s heart can bear—forsaken at the altar!
She was taken home again by her relatives, a pallid, wild-eyed, half-frantic girl, vowing bitterest vengeance on her recreant lover as she stripped the bridal veil from her dark, queenly head, and tramped it angrily beneath her feet.
“Thus I trample on the past, on all the love I bore him, and vow myself to vengeance!” she cried madly, to her cousin, Mrs. van Dorn, whose eyes filled with sympathetic tears as she cried:
“It is a cruel blow, dear Cora, but do not be too rash in your anger. Perhaps something happened to prevent Frank’s coming and everything may yet be explained to your satisfaction.”
But her consoling words rang hollow in her own ears, for she thought:
“I had a presentiment of this on the way to the church. I felt certain that he would fail to meet Cora there. Oh, it was very cruel in him to wound the poor girl so. It is a disgrace that will cling to a girl through life, being jilted at the altar. How much kinder it would have been to break with her sooner and avoid a public exposé like the painful one we have had to-day. I feel almost as indignant as Cora at the slight put on our family!”
Later on her husband looked in at the dressing-room door, saying kindly:
“How is Cora, poor child? I have something to tell her about Laurier if I may come in!”
“Speak quickly!” cried the half-distraught girl, turning almost fiercely upon him. “Has anything happened to the wretch?”
“I was just about to say that I just now met Hazelton, and he told me he saw Laurier and Noel at Greenwood when the funeral services over your aunt’s daughter were concluded at the vault.”
“At her funeral—in our bridal hour! False, wicked wretch! I will never forgive him, never! May the curse of a forsaken bride blight his life from now to the grave! May the cruelest misfortunes of life overtake him!” raved the insulted girl in the madness of her wounded love and pride.
“Be calm, Cora, I shall avenge this slight to you,” her cousin said angrily, and just then he received a summons from downstairs.
It was sunset, and Ernest Noel, very pale and shaken, had just been released on bail and come to bring them the news of all that had happened to prevent Laurier from meeting his bride at the altar—lying instead at a hospital at the point of death.