A Strange Disappearance

She had not long to wait. Almost with the closing of the street door upon the detectives and their prisoners, Mr. Blake followed by Mrs. Daniels and another lady whose thick veil and long cloak but illy concealed the patrician features and stately form of the Countess De Mirac, entered the room.

The surprise had its effect; Luttra was evidently for the moment thrown off her guard.

“Mrs. Daniels!” she breathed, holding out her hands with a longing gesture.

“My dear mistress!” returned that good woman, taking those hands in hers but in a respectful way that proved the constraint imposed upon her by Mr. Blake’s presence. “Do I see you again and safe?”

“You must have thought I cared little for the anxiety you would be sure to feel,” said that fair young mistress, gazing with earnestness into the glad but tearful eyes of the housekeeper. “But indeed, I have been in no position to communicate with you, nor could I do so without risking that to protect which I so outraged my feelings as to leave the house at all. I mean the life and welfare of its master, Mrs. Daniels.”

“Ha, what is that?” quoth Mr. Blake. “It was to save me, you consented to follow them?”

“Yes; what else would have led me to such an action? They might have killed me, I would not have cared, but when they began to utter threats against you—”

“Mrs. Blake,” exclaimed Mrs. Daniels, catching hold of her mistress’s uplifted hand, and pointing to a scar that slightly disfigured her white arm a little above the wrist, “Mrs. Blake, what’s that?”

A pink flush, the first I had seen on her usually pale countenance, rose for an instant to her cheeks, and she seemed to hesitate.

“It was not there when I last saw you, Mrs. Blake.”

“No,” was the slow reply, “I found myself forced that night to inflict upon myself a little wound. It is nothing, let it go.”

“No, Luttra I cannot let it go,” said her husband, advancing towards her with something like gentle command. “I must hear not only about this but all the other occurrences of that night. How came they to find you in the refuge you had attained?”

“I think,” said she in a low tone the underlying suffering of which it would be hard to describe, “that it was not to seek me they first invaded your house. They had heard you were a rich man, and the sight of that ladder running up the side of the new extension was too much for them. Indeed I know that it was for purposes of robbery they came, for they had hired this room opposite you some days previous to making the attempt. You see they were almost destitute of money and though they had some buried in the cellar of the old house in Vermont, they dared not leave the city to procure it. My brother was obliged to do so later, however. It was a surprise to them seeing me in your house. They had reached the roof of the extension and were just lifting up the corner of the shade I had dropped across the open window—I always open my window a few minutes before preparing to retire—when I rose from the chair in which I had been brooding, and turned up the gas. I was combing my hair at the time and so of course they recognized me. Instantly they gave a secret signal I, alas, remembered only too well, and crouching back, bade me put out the light that they might enter with safety. I was at first too much startled to realize the consequences of my action, and with some vague idea that they had discovered my retreat and come for purposes of advice or assistance, I did what they bid. Immediately they threw back the shade and came in, their huge figures looming frightfully in the faint light made by a distant gas lamp in the street below. ‘What do you want?’ were my first words uttered in a voice I scarcely recognized for my own; ‘why do you steal on me like this in the night and through an open window fifty feet from the ground? Aren’t you afraid you will be discovered and sent back to the prison from which you have escaped?’ Their reply sent a chill through my blood and awoke me to a realization of what I had done in thus allowing two escaped convicts to enter a house not my own. ‘We want money and we’re not afraid of anything now you are here.’ And without heeding my exclamation of horror, they coolly told me that they would wait where they were till the household was asleep, when they would expect me to show them the way to the silver closet or what was better, the safe or wherever it was Mr. Blake kept his money. I saw they took me for a servant, as indeed I was, and for some minutes I managed to preserve that position in their eyes. But when in a sudden burst of rage at my refusal to help them, they pushed me aside and hurried to the door with the manifest intention of going below, I forgot prudence in my fears and uttered some wild appeal to them not to do injury to any one in the house for it was my husband’s. Of course that disclosure had its natural effect.

“They stopped, but only to beset me with questions till the whole truth came out. I could not have committed a worse folly than thus taking them into my confidence. Instantly the advantages to be gained by using my secret connection with so wealthy a man for the purpose of cowering me and blackmailing him, seemed to strike both their minds at once, slow as they usually are to receive impressions. The silver-closet and money-safe sank to a comparatively insignificant position in their eyes, and to get me out of the house, and with my happiness at stake, treat with the honorable man who notwithstanding his non-approval of me as a woman, still regarded me as his lawfully wedded wife, became in their eyes a thing of such wonderful promise they were willing to run any and every risk to test its value. But here to their great astonishment I rebelled; astonishment because they could not realize my desiring anything above money and the position to which they declared I was by law entitled. In vain I pleaded my love; in vain I threatened exposure of their plans if not whereabouts. The mine of gold which they fondly believed they had stumbled upon unawares, promised too richly to be easily abandoned. ‘You must go with us,’ said they, ‘if not peaceably then by force,’ and they actually advanced upon me, upsetting a chair and tearing down one of the curtains to which I clung. It was then I committed that little act concerning which you questioned me. I wanted to show them I was not to be moved by threats of that character; that I did not even fear the shedding of my blood; and that they would only be wasting their time in trying to sway me by hints of personal violence. And they were a little impressed, sufficiently so at least to turn their threats in another direction, awakening fears at last which I could not conceal, much as I felt it would be policy to do so. Gathering up a few articles I most prized, my wedding ring, Mr. Blake, and a photograph of yourself that Mrs. Daniels had been kind enough to give me, I put on my bonnet and cloak and said I would go with them, since they persisted in requiring it. The fact is I no longer possessed motive or strength to resist. Even your unexpected appearance at the door, Mrs. Daniels, offered no prospect of hope. Arouse the house? what would that do? only reveal my cherished secret and perhaps jeopardize the life of my husband. Besides, they were my own near kin, remember, and so had some little claim upon my consideration, at least to the point of my not personally betraying them unless they menaced immediate and actual harm. The escape by the window which would have been a difficult task for most women to perform, was easy enough for me. I was brought up to wild ways you know, and the descent of a ladder forty feet long was a comparatively trivial thing for me to accomplish. It was the tearing away from a life of silent peace, the reentrance of my soul into an atmosphere of sin and deadly plotting, that was the hard thing, the difficult dreadful thing which hung weights to my feet, and made me well nigh mad. And it was this which at the sight of a policeman in the street led me to make an effort to escape. But it was not successful. Though I was fortunate enough to free myself from the grasp of my father and brother, I reached the gate on – street only to encounter the eyes of him whose displeasure I most feared, looking sternly upon me from the other side. The shock was too much for me in my then weak and unnerved condition. Without considering anything but the fact that he never had known and never must, that I had been in the same house with him for so long, I rushed back to the corner and into the arms of the men who awaited me. How you came to be there, Mr. Blake, or why you did not open the gate and follow, I cannot say.”

“The gate was locked,” returned that gentleman. “You remember it closes with a spring, and can only be opened by means of a key which I did not have.”

“My father had it,” she murmured; “he spent a whole week in the endeavor to get hold of it, and finally succeeded on the evening of the very day he used it. It was left in the lock I believe.”

“So much for servants,” I whispered to myself.

“The next morning,” continued she, “they put the case very plainly before me. I was at liberty to return at once to my home if I would promise to work in their interest by making certain demands upon you as your wife. All they wanted, said they, was a snug little sum and a lift out of the country. If I would secure them these, they would trouble me no more. But I could not concede to anything of that nature, of course, and the consequence was these long weeks of imprisonment and suspense; weeks that I do not now begrudge, seeing they have brought me the assurance of your esteem and the knowledge, that wherever I go, your thoughts will follow me with compassion if not with love.”

And having told her story and thus answered his demands, she assumed once more the position of lofty reserve that seemed to shut him back from advance like a wall of invincible crystal.

CHAPTER XX. THE BOND THAT UNITES

But he was not to be discouraged. “And after all this, after all you have suffered for my sake and your own, do you think you have a right to deny me the one desire of my heart? How can you reconcile it with your ideas of devotion, Luttra?”

“My ideas of devotion look beyond the present, Mr. Blake. It is to save you from years of wearing anxiety that I consent to the infliction upon you of a passing pang.”

He took a bold step forward. “Luttra, you do not know a man’s heart. To lose you now would not merely inflict a passing pang, but sow the seeds of a grief that would go with me to the grave.”

“Do you then”—she began, but paused blushing. Mrs. Daniels took the opportunity to approach her on the other side.

“My dear mistress,” said she, “you are wrong to hold out in this matter.” And her manner betrayed something of the peculiar agitation that had belonged to it in the former times of her secret embarassment. “I, who have honored the family which I have so long served, above every other in the land, tell you that you can do it no greater good than to join it now, or inflict upon it any greater harm than to wilfully withdraw yourself from the position in which God has placed you.”

“And I,” said another voice, that of the Countess de Mirac, who up to this time had held herself in the background, but who now came forward and took her place with the rest, “I, who have borne the name of Blake, and who am still the proudest of them all at heart, I, the Countess de Mirac, cousin to your husband there, repeat what this good woman has said, and in holding out my hand to you, ask you to make my cousin happy and his family contented by assuming that position in his household which the law as well as his love accords you.”

The girl looked at the daintily gloved hand held out to her, colored faintly, and put her own within it.

“I thank you for your goodness,” said she, surveying with half-sad, half-admiring glances, the somewhat pale face of the beautiful brunette.

“And you will yield to our united requests?” She cast her eye down at the spot where her father and brother had cowered in their shackles, and shook her head. “I dare not,” said she.

Immediately Mrs. Daniels, whose emotion had been increasing every moment since she last spoke, plunged her hand into her bosom and drew out a folded paper.

“Mrs. Blake,” said she, “if you could be convinced that what I have told you was true, and that you would be irretrievably injuring your husband and his interests, by persisting in that desertion of him which you purpose, would you not consent to reconsider your determination, settled as it appears to be?”

“If I could be made to see that, most certainly,” returned she in a low voice whose broken accents betrayed at what cost she remained true to her resolve. “But I cannot.”

“Perhaps the sight of this paper will help you,” said she. And turning to Mr. Blake she exclaimed, “Your pardon for what I am called upon to do. A duty has been laid upon me which I cannot avoid, hard as it is for an old servant to perform. This paper—but it is no more than just that you, sir, should see and read it first.” And with a hand that quivered with fear or some equally strong emotion, she put it in his clasp.

The exclamation that rewarded the act made us all start forward. “My father’s handwriting!” were his words.

“Executed under my eye,” observed Mrs. Daniels.

His glance ran rapidly down the sheet and rested upon the final signature.

“Why has this been kept from me?” demanded he, turning upon Mrs. Daniels with sternness.

“Your father so willed it,” was her reply. “‘For a year’ was his command, ‘you shall keep this my last will and testament which I give into your care with my dying hands, a secret from the world. At the expiration of that time mark if my son’s wife sits at the head of her husband’s table; if she does and is happy, suppress this by deliberately giving it to the flames, but if from any reason other than death, she is not seen there, carry it at once to my son, and bid him as he honors my memory, to see that my wishes as there expressed are at once carried out.’”

The paper in Mr. Blake’s hand fluttered.

“You are aware what those wishes are?” said he.

“I steadied his hand while he wrote,” was her sad and earnest reply.

Mr. Blake turned with a look of inexpressible deference to his wife.

“Madame,” said he “when I urged you with such warmth to join your fate to mine and honor my house by presiding over it, I thought I was inviting you to share the advantages of wealth as well as the love of a lonely man’s heart. This paper undeceives me. Luttra, the daughter-in-law of Abner Blake, not Holman, his son, is the one who by the inheritance of his millions has the right to command in this presence.”

With a cry she took from him the will whose purport was thus briefly made known. “O, how could he, how could he?” exclaimed she, running her eye down the sheet, and then crushing it spasmodically to her breast. “Did he not realize that he could do me no greater wrong?” Then in one yielding up of her whole womanhood to the mighty burst of passion that had been flooding the defenses of her heart for so long, she exclaimed in a voice the mingled rapture and determination of which rings in my ears even now, “And is it a thing like this with its suggestions of mercenary interest that shall bridge the gulf that separates you and me? Shall the giving or the gaining of a fortune make necessary the unital of lives over which holier influences have beamed and loftier hopes shone? No, no; by the smile with which your dying father took me to his breast, love alone, with the hope and confidence it gives, shall be the bond to draw us together and make of the two separate planes on which we stand, a common ground where we can meet and be happy.”

And with one supreme gesture she tore into pieces the will which she held, and sank all aglow with woman’s divinest joy into the arms held out to receive her.

I was present at the wedding-reception given them by the Countess De Mirac in her elegant apartments at the Windsor. I never saw a happier bride, nor a husband in whose eyes burned a deeper contentment. To all questions as to who this extraordinary woman could be, where she was found, and in what place and at what time she was married, the Countess had apt replies whose art of hushing curiosity without absolutely satisfying it, was one of the tokens she yet preserved, of her short sway as grand lady, in the gayest and most hollow city of the world.

As I prepared to leave a scene perhaps the most gratifying in many respects that I had ever witnessed, I felt a slight touch on my arm. It came from Mrs. Blake who with her husband had crossed the room to bid me farewell.

“Will you allow me to thank you,” said she, “for the risk you ran for me one day and of which I have just heard. It was an act that merits the gratitude of years, and as such shall be always remembered by me. If the old French artist with the racking cough ever desires a favor at my hands, let him feel free to ask it. The interest I experienced in him in the days of my trouble, will suffer no abatement in these of my joy and prosperity.” And with a look that was more than words, she gave me a flower from the bouquet she held in her hand, and smilingly withdrew.