 CHAPTER XII. A Woman's Love Shall I ever forget the blast of driving rain that struck our faces and enveloped us in a cloud of wet, as the door swung on its hinges, and led us forth into the night, or the electric thrill that shot through me, as the slender girl grasped my hand and drew me away through the blinding darkness? It was not that I was so much affected by her beauty, as influenced by her power and energy. The fury of the gale seemed to bend to her will, the wind lend wings to her feet. I began to realize what intellect was. Arrived at the roadside, she paused and looked back. The two burly forms of the men we had left behind us were standing in the door of the inn. In another moment they had plunged forth and toward us. With a low cry the young girl leaped towards a tree, where, to my unbounded astonishment, I behilled my horse standing ready-saddled. Dragging the mare from her fastenings, she hung the lantern, burning as it was, on the pommel of the saddle, struck the panting creature a smart blow upon the flank, and drew back with a leap to my side. The startled horse, Norded, gave a plunge of dismay, and started away from us down the road. We will wait, said Latra. The words were no sooner out of her mouth than her father and brother rushed by. They will follow the light, whispered she, and, seizing me again by the hand, she hurried me away in the direction opposite to that which the horse had taken. If you will trust me, I will bring you to shelter, she murmured, bending her slight form to the gusty wind, but relaxing not a whit of her speed. You are too kind, I murmured, in return. Why should you expose yourself to such an extent for a stranger? Her hand tightened on mine, but she did not reply, and we hastened on as speedily as the wind and rain would allow. After a short but determined breasting of the storm, during which my breath had nearly failed me, she suddenly stopped. Do you know, she exclaimed in a low impressive tone, that we are on the verge of a steep and dreadful precipice. It runs along here for a quarter of a mile, and it is not an uncommon thing for a horse and rider to be dashed over it in a night like this. There was something in her manner that awakened a chill in my veins, almost as if she had pointed out some dreadful doom which I had unwittingly escaped. This is, then, a dangerous road, I murmured. Very was her hurried and almost incoherent reply. How far we travel through the mud and tangled grasses of that horrible road, I do not know. It seemed a long distance. It was probably not more than three-quarters of a mile. At last she paused with the short, Here We Are, and, looking up, I saw that we were in front of a small, unlighted cottage. No refuge ever appeared more welcome to a pair of sinking wanderers, I am sure. Wet to the skin, bedrabelled with mud, exhausted with breasting the gale, we stood for a moment under the porch to regain our breath. Then, with her characteristic energy, she lifted the knocker and struck a smart blow on the door. We will find shelter here, said she. She was not mistaken. In a few moments we were standing once more before a comfortable fire, hastily built by the worthy couple who slumbers we had just interrupted. As I began to realize the sweetness of conscious safety, all that this young, heroic creature had done for me, swept warmly across my mind. Looking up from the fire that was beginning to infuse its heat through my grateful system, I surveyed her as she slowly undid her long braids and shook them dry over the blaze, and almost started to see how young she was. Not more than sixteen, I should say, and yet what an invincible will shown from her dark eyes and dignified her slender form. A will gentle as it was strong, elevated as it was unbending. I bowed my head as I watched her, in grateful thankfulness which I presently put into words. At once she drew herself erect. I did but my duty, said she quietly. I am glad I was prospered in it. Then slowly, if you are grateful, sir, will you promise to say nothing of what took place at the inn? Instantly I remembered a suspicion which had crossed my mind while there, and my hand went involuntarily to my vest pocket. The roll of bills was gone. She did not falter. I would be relieved if you would, continued she. I drew out my empty hand, looked at it, but said nothing. Have you lost anything? asked she. Search in your overcoat pockets. I plunged my hand into the one nearest her, and drew it out with satisfaction. The roll of bills was there. I give you my promise, said I. You will find a bill missing, she murmured. For what amount I do not know, the sacrifice of something was inevitable. I can only wonder over the ingenuity you displayed, as well as express my appreciation for your bravery, returned I with enthusiasm. You are a noble girl. She put out her hand as if compliments hurt her. It is the first time they have ever attempted anything like that, cried she, in a quick low tone, full of shame and suffering. They have shown a disposition to take money sometimes, but they never threatened life before, and they did threaten yours. They saw you take out your money through a hole pierced in the wall of the room you occupied, and the sight made them mad. They were going to kill you, and then tumble you and your horse over the precipice below there. But I overheard them talking, and when they went out to saddle the horse, I hurried up to your room to wake you. I had to take possession of the bills. You were not safe while you held them. I took them quietly because I hoped to save you without betraying them. But I failed in that. You must remember they are my father and my brother. I will not betray them, said I. She smiled. It was a wintry gleam, but it ineffably softened her face. I became conscious of a movement of pity towards her. You have a hard lot, remarked I. Your life must be a sad one. She flashed upon me one glass of her dark eye. I was born for hardship, said she, but—and a sudden while shudder seized her. But not for crime. The word fell like a drop of blood rung from her heart. Good heavens, cried I, and must you? No, rang from her lips in a clarion-like peel. Some things cut the very bonds of nature. I am not called upon to cleave to what will drag me into infamy. Then calmly, as of speaking of the most ordinary matter in the world, I shall never go back to that house we have left behind us, sir. But, cried I, glancing at her scanty garments, where will you go? What will you do? You are young. And very strong, she interrupted, do not fear for me. And her smile was like a burst of sudden sunshine. I said no more that night. But when in the morning I stumbled upon her sitting in the kitchen, reading a book not only above her position, but beyond her years, a sudden impulse seized me, and I asked her if she would like to be educated. The instantaneous illumining of her whole face was sufficient reply without her low emphatic words. I would be content to study on my knees to know what some women do whom I have seen. It is not necessary for me to relate, with what pleasure I caught, at the idea that here was a chance to repay in some slight measure the inestimable favor she had done me. Nor by what arguments I finally won her to accept an education at my hands, as some sort of recompense for the life she had saved. The advantage which it would give her in her struggle with the world, she seemed duly to appreciate, but that so great a favor could be shown her, without causing me much trouble and unwarrantable expense, she could not at once be brought to comprehend, until she could, she held out with that gentle but inflexible will of hers. The battle, however, was won at last, and I left her in that little cottage, with the understanding that as soon as the matter could be arranged, she was to enter a certain boarding school in Troy with the mistress of which I was acquainted. Meanwhile she was to go out to service at Melville, and earn enough money to provide herself with clothes. I was a careless fellow in those days, but I kept my promise to that girl. I not only entered her into that school for a course of three years, but acting through its mistress, who had taken a great fancy to her, supplied her with the necessities her position required. It was so easy, merely the signing of a check from time to time, and it was done. I say this because I really think, if it had involved any personal sacrifice on my part, even an hour of my time, or the labour of a thought, I should not have done it. For with my return to the city, my interest in my cousin revived, absorbing me to such an extent that any matter disconnected with her soon lost all charm for me. Two years passed. I was the slave of Evelyn Blake, but there was no engagement between us. My father's determined opposition was enough to prevent that, but there was an understanding which I fondly hoped would one day open for me the way of happiness. But I did not know my father. Sick as he was, he was at that time laboring under the disease, which in a couple of months later bore him to the tomb. He kept an eye upon my movements, and seemed to probe my inmost heart. At last he came to a definite decision and spoke. His words opened a world of dismay before me. I was his only child, as he remarked, and it had been and was the desire of his heart to leave me as rich and independent a man as himself. But I seemed disposed to commit one of those acts against which he had the most determined prejudice, marriage between cousins being in his eyes an unsanctified and dangerous proceeding liable to consequences the most unhappy. If I persisted, he must will his property elsewhere. The Blake estate should never descend with the seal of his approbation to a race of probable imbeciles. Nor was this enough. He not only robbed me of the woman I loved, but with a clear insight into the future, I presume, insisted upon my marrying someone else of respectability and worth before he died. Anyone whose appearance will do you credit, and whose virtue is beyond reproach, said he. I don't ask her to be rich, or even the offspring of one of our old families. Let her be good and pure, and of no connection to us, and I will bless her and you with my dying breath. The idea had seized upon him with great force, and I soon saw he was not to be shaken out of it. To all my objections he returned, but the one word. I don't restrict your choice, and I give you a month in which to make it. If at the end of that time you cannot bring your bride to my bedside, I must look around for an heir who will not thwart my dying wishes. A month I surveyed the fashionable bells that nightly thronged the parlours of my friends, and felt my heart sink within me. Take one of them for my wife, loving another woman? Impossible! Women like these demanded something in return for the honor they conferred upon a man by marrying him. Well, they had it. Position? That was theirs also. Consideration? Ah, what consideration had I to give? I turned from them with distaste. My cousin Evelyn gave me no help. She was a proud woman, and loved my money and my expectations as much as she did me. If you must marry another woman to retain your wealth, Mary, said she, but do not marry one of my associates. I will have no rival in my own empire. Your wife must be a plainer and a less aspiring woman than Evelyn Blake. Yet do not discredit your name, which is mine, she would always add. Meanwhile the days flew by. If my own conscience had allowed me to forget the fact, my father's eagerly inquiring but sternly unrelenting gaze as I came each evening to his bedside would have kept it sufficiently in my mind. I began to feel like one in the power of some huge, crushing machine who slowly descending weight he in vain endeavors to escape. How or when the thought of Latra first crossed my mind I cannot say. At first I recoiled at the suggestion, and put it away from me in disdain. But it ever recurred, and with it so many arguments in her favour, that before long I found myself regarding it as a refuge. To be sure she was a waif and a stray, but that seemed to be the kind of wife demanded of me. She was allied to rogues, if not villains, I knew. But then had she not cut all connection with them, dropped away from them, planted her feet on new ground which they would never invade? I commenced to cherish the idea. With this friendless, grateful, unassuming protege of mine for a wife, I would be as little bound as might be. She would ask nothing, and I need give nothing, beyond a home and the common attentions required of a gentleman and a friend. Then she was not disagreeable, nor was her beauty of a type to suggest the charms of her I had lost. None of the graces of the haughty patrician lady whose lightest gesture was a command would appear in this humble girl to mock and constrain me. No, I should have a fair wife and an obedient one, but no vulgarized shadow of Evelyn, thank God, or of any of her fashionably dressed friends. Advanced thus far towards the end I went to see Latra. I had not beheld her since the morning we parted at the door of that little cottage in Vermont, and her presence caused me a shock. This, the humble wife with the appealing, grateful eyes I had expected to encounter, this tall and slender creature, with an aureola of golden hair about her face, that it was an education to behold. I felt a half-movement of anger as I surveyed her. I had been cheated. I had planted a grape seed, and a palm tree had sprung up in its place. I was so taken aback. My salute lost something of the benevolent condescension I had intended to infuse into it. She seemed to feel my embarrassment, and a half-smile fluttered to her lips. That smile decided me. It was sweet, but above all else it was appealing. How I won that woman to marry me in ten days' time, I care not to state. Not by holding up my wealth and position before her. Something restrained me from that. I was resolved, and perhaps it was the only point of light in my conduct at that time, not to buy this young girl. I never spoke of my expectations. I never alluded to my present advantages, yet I won her. We were married there in Troy in the quietest and most unpretending manner. Why the fact has never transpired, I cannot say. I certainly took no special pains to conceal it at the time, though I acknowledged that after our separation I did resort to such measures as I thought necessary to suppress what had become gall and warm wood to my pride. My first move after the ceremony was to bring her immediately to New York and to this house. With perhaps a pardonable bitterness of spirit, I had refrained from any notification of my intentions, and it was as strangers might enter an unprepared dwelling that we stepped across the threshold of this house and passed immediately to my father's room. I can give you no wedding and no honeymoon, I told her. My father is dying and demands my care. From the altar to a death-bed may be sad for you, but it is an inevitable condition of your marriage with me. And she had accepted her fate with a deep, unspeakable smile it has taken me long months of loneliness and suffering to understand. Father, I bring you my bride, were my first words to him, as the door closed behind us, shedding us in with the dread, invisible presence that for so long a time had been relentlessly advancing upon our home. I shall never forget how he roused himself in his bed, nor with what eager eyes he read her young face and surveyed her slight form swaying towards him in her sudden emotion like a flame in a breeze, nor while I live shall I lose sight of the spasm of uncontrollable joy with which he lifted his aged arms towards her, nor the look with which she sprang from my side, and nestled, yes, nestled, on the breast that never to my remembrance had opened itself to me even in the years of my earliest childhood, for my father was a stern man who believed in holding love at arm's length and measured affection by the depth of awe it inspired. My daughter broke from his lips, and he never inquired who she was or what. No, not even when after a moment of silence she raised her head and with a sudden low cry of passionate longing looked in his face and murmured, I never had a father. Sirs, it is impossible for me to continue without revealing depths of pride and bitterness in my own nature, from which I now shrink with unspeakable pain. So far from being touched by this scene, I felt myself grow hard under it. If he had been disappointed in my choice, queried, added, or even been simply pleased at my obedience, I might have accepted the wife I had won and been tolerably grateful. But to love her, admire her, glory in her when Evelyn Blake had never succeeded in winning a glance from his eyes that was not a public disapprobation. I could not endure it, my whole being rebelled, and a movement like hate took possession of me. Bidding my wife to leave me with my father alone, I scarcely waited for the door to close upon the poor young thing, before all that had been seething in my breast for a month burst from me in the one cry. I have brought you a daughter as you commanded me. Now give me the blessing you promised and let me go, for I cannot live with a woman I do not love. Instantly, and before his lips could move, the door opened and the woman I thus repudiated in the first dawning hour of her young bliss stood before us. My God, what a face! When I think of it now in the night season, when from dreams that gloomy as they are, are often a lesion in the thoughts which beset me in my waking hours, I suddenly arouse to see starting upon me from the surrounding shadows that young fair brow with its halo of golden tresses, i.e., blotted by the agony that turned her that instant into stone. I wonder I did not take out the pistol that lay in the table near which I stood, and shoot her lifeless on the spot as some sort of a compensation for the misery I had caused her. I say I wonder now, then I only thought of braving it out. Straight as a dart, but with that look on her face, she came towards us. Did I hear a right where the words that came from her lips? Have you married me, a woman beneath your station, as I now perceive, because you were commanded to do so? Have you not loved me, given me that which alone makes marriage a sacrament, or even a possibility? And must you leave this house made sacred by the recumbent form of your dying father, if I remain within it? I saw my father stiff and palette lips move silently, as though he would answer for me if he could, and summoning up with courage I possessed, I told her that I deeply regretted she had overheard my inconsiderate words, that I had never meant to wound her, whatever bitterness lay in my heart towards one who had thwarted me in my dearest and most cherished hopes, that I humbly begged her pardon, and would so far acknowledge her claim upon me, as to promise that I would not leave my home at this time, if it distressed her, my desire being not to injure her, only to protect myself. Oh, the scorn that mounted to her brow at these weak words! Not scorn of me, thank God, worthy as I was of it that hour, but scorn of my slight opinion of her. Then I heard a right, she murmured, and waited with a look that would not be gain-said. I could only bow my head, cursing the day I was born. Holmen, Holmen, came in agonized and treaty from the bed. You will not rob me of my daughter now. Startled, I looked up. Letra was half-way to the door. What are you going to do? cried I, bounding towards her. She stopped me with a look. The son must never forsake the father, said she. If either of us must leave the house this day, let it be I. Then, in a softer tone, when you asked me to be your wife, I, who had worshipped you from the moment you entered my father's house on the memorable night I left it, was so overcome at your condescension that I forgot you did not preface it by the usual, passionate, I love you, which more than the marriage-ring binds two hearts together. In the glamour and glow of my joy I did not see that the smile that was in my heart was missing from your face. I was to be your wife, and that was enough, or so I thought then, for I loved you. Ah, and I do now, my husband, love you, so that I leave you. Were it for your happiness I would do more than that, I would give you back your freedom, but from what I hear it seems that you need a wife in name, and I will be but fulfilling your desire in holding that place for you. I will never disgrace the position high as it is above my poor deserts. When the day comes, if the day comes, that you need, or feel you need, the sustainment of my presence, or the devotion of my heart, no power on earth save that of death itself shall keep me from your side. Till that day arrives, I remain what you have made me, a bride who lays no claim to the name you this morning bestowed upon her, and with the gesture that was like a benediction, she turned, and noiselessly, breathlessly as a dream that vanishes, left the room. Sirs, I believe I uttered a cry and stumbled towards her. Someone in that room uttered a cry, but it may be that it only rose in my heart, and that the one I heard came from my father's lips. For, when at the door I turned, startled at the deathly silence, I saw he had fainted on his pillow. I could not leave him so. Calling to Mrs. Daniels, who was never far from my father in those days, I bade her to stop the lady, I believe I called her my wife, who was going down the stairs, and then rushed to his side. It took minutes to revive him. When he came to himself it was to ask for the creature who had flashed like a beacon of light upon his darkening path. I rose, as if to fetch her, but before I could advance I heard a voice say, She is not there. She is not here. And, looking up, I saw Mrs. Daniels glide into the room. Mrs. Blake has gone, sir. I could not keep her. End of CHAPTER XII. CHAPTER XIII. OF A STRANGE DISAPPARANCE. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. That was the last time my eyes ever rested upon my wife. Whether she went or what refuge she gained, I never knew. My father, who had received in this scene a great shock, began to fail so rapidly, he demanded my constant care. And though from time to time as I ministered to him, and noted, with what a yearning persistency he would eye the door, and then turn and meet my gaze, with a look I could not understand, I caught myself asking, whether I had done a deed destined to hang for ever about me like a pall. It was not till after his death that the despairing image of the bright young creature to whom I had given my name returned with any startling distinctness to my mind, or that I allowed myself to ask, whether the heavy gloom which I now felt settling upon me was owing to the sense of shame that overpowered me at the remembrance of the past, or to the possible loss I had sustained in the departure of my young, unloved bride. The announcement at this time of the engagement between Evelyn Blake and the Count de Merac may have had something to do with this, though I had never in the most passionate hours of my love for her lost sight of that sight of her nature which demanded as her right the luxury of great wealth, and though in my tacit abandonment of her and secret marriage with another, I had certainly lost the right to complain of her actions, whatever they might be. This manifest surrendering of herself to the power of wealth and show at the price of all that women are believed to hold dear was an undoubted blow to my pride, and the confidence I had till now unconsciously reposed in her inherent womanliness and affection. That she had but made on a more conspicuous scale the same sacrifice as myself to the God of wealth and position was in my eyes at that time no palliation of her conduct. I was a man none too good or exalted at the best. She, a woman, should have been superior to the temptations that overpowered me. That she was not seemed to drag all womanhood a little nearer the dust. Fashionable womanhood, I ought to say. For somehow even at that early day her conduct did not seem to affect the vivid image of Lutras standing upon my threshold, shorn of her joy, but burning with a devotion I did not comprehend, and saying, I loved you, ah, and I do yet, my husband, love you so that I leave you. When the day comes, if the day comes, you need or feel you need the sustainment of my presence or the devotion of my heart. No power on earth save that of death itself shall keep me from your side. Yes, with the fading away of other faces and other forms, that face and that form now began to usurp the chief place in my thoughts. Not to my relief and pleasure, that could scarcely be remembering all that had occurred, rather to my increasing distress and passionate resentment. I longed to forget I was held by a tie that, known to the world, would cause me the bitterest shame, for by this time the true character of her father and brother had been revealed, and I found myself bound to the daughter of a convicted criminal. But I could not forget her. The look with which she had left me was branded into my consciousness. Night and day it floated before me, till, to escape it, I resolved to fasten it upon canvas, if by that means I might succeed in eliminating it from my dreams. The painting you have seen this night is the result. Born with an artist's touch and insight, that under other circumstances might, perhaps, have raised me into the cold, dry atmosphere of fame. The execution of this piece of work presented but few difficulties to my somewhat accustomed hand. Day by day her beauty grew beneath my brush, startling me often with its spiritual force and significance, till my mind grew feverish over its work. And I could scarcely refrain from rising at night to give a touch here or there to the floating golden hair, or the piercing tender eyes turned, ah, ever turned upon the inmost citadel of my heart, with that look that slew my father before his time, and made me, yes, me, old in spirit, even in the ardent years of my first manhood. At last it was finished, and she stood before me, lifelike and real, in the very garments, and with almost the very aspect of that never-to-be-forgotten moment. Even the roses which in the secret uneasiness of my conscience I had put in her hand on our departure from Troy, as a sort of visible token that I regarded her as my bride, and which through all her interview with my father she had never dropped, blossom to before me on the canvas. Nothing that could give reality to the likeness was lacking. The vision of my dream stood embodied in my sight, and I looked for peace. Alas, that picture now became my dream, inserting it behind that of Evelyn, which for two years had held its place above my armchair, I turned its face to the wall when I rose in the morning. But at night it beamed ever upon me, becoming as the months passed, the one thing to hold to and muse over when the world grew a little noisy in my ears, and the never-ceasing conflict of the ages beat a trifle too loudly on heart and brain. Meanwhile no word of her, only of her villainous father and brother, no token that she had escaped evil or was removed from want. If I had loved her I could not have secured her, for I did not know where to find her. Her countenance illumined my wall, but her fair young self lay for all I knew, sheltered within the darkness and silence of the tomb. At length my morbid broodings worked out their natural result. A dull melancholy settled upon me which nothing could break. Even the news that my cousin, who had lost her husband a month after marriage, had returned to America with expectation to remain, scarcely cost a ripple in my apathy. Was I stinking into a hypochondriac, or was my passion for the beautiful brunette dead? I determined to solve the doubt. Seeking her where I knew she would be found, I gazed again upon her beauty. It was absolutely nothing to me. A fair young face with high thoughts in every glance floated like sunshine between us, and I left the haughty countess with the knowledge burnt deep into my brain that the love I had considered slain was alive and demanding, but that the object of it past recall was my lost young wife. Once assured of this my apathy vanished like mist before a kindle torch. Henceforth the future held a hope and life a purpose. I would seek my wife throughout the world and bring her back if I found her in prison between the men whose existence was a curse to my pride. But where should I turn my steps? What gold and thread had she left in my hand by which to trace her through the labyrinth of this world? I could think of but one, and that was the love which could restrain her from going away from me too far. The latter of old would not leave the city where her husband lived. If she was not changed, I ought to be able to find her somewhere within this great Babylon of ours. Wisdom told me to set the police upon her track, but pride bade me try every other means first. So with the feverish energy of one leading a forlorn hope, I began to pace the streets if happily I might see her face shine upon me from the crowd of passersby. A foolish fancy, unproductive of result. I not only failed to see her, but anyone like her. In the midst of the despair occasioned by this failure, a thought flashed across me, or rather a remembrance. One night not long since, being uncommonly restless, I had risen from my bed, dressed me and gone out into the yard back of my house for a little air. It was an unusual thing for me to do, but I seemed to be suffocating where I was, and nothing else would satisfy me. As you already surmise, it was the night on which disappeared the sewing-girl of which you have so often spoken. But I knew nothing of that. My thoughts were far from my own home and its concerns. You may judge what a state of mind I was in when I tell you that I even thought at one moment while I paused before the gate leading into street that I saw the face of her with whom my thoughts were ever busy peering upon me through the bars. You tell me that I did see a girl there, and that it was the one who had lived a sewing-woman in my house. It may be so, but at the time I considered it a vision of my wife, and the remembrance of it, coming as it did after my repeated failures to encounter her in the street, worked a change in my plans. For regarded as a weakness or not, the recollection that the vision I had seen were the garments of a working-woman rather than a lady, acted upon me like a warning not to search for her any longer among the resorts of the well-dressed, but in the regions of poverty and toil. I therefore took to wandering such as I have no heart to describe, nor do I need to, if, as you have informed me, I have been followed. The result was almost madness, though deep in my heart I felt a steadfast trust in the purity of her intentions, the fear of which she might have been driven to by the awful poverty and despair I every day saw seething about me was like hot steel in brain and heart. Then her father and her brother, to what might they not have forced her, innocent and loving soul though she was. Drinking the dregs of a cup such as I had never considered it possible for me to taste, I got so far as to believe that her eyes would yet flash upon me from beneath some of the tattered shawls I saw sullying the forms of the young girls upon which I hourly stumbled. Yes, and even made a move to see my cousin, if happily I could so win upon her compassion as to gain her consent to shelter the poor creature of my dreams in case the necessity came. But my heart failed me at the sight of her cold face above the splendor she had bought with her charms, and I was saved a humiliation I might never have risen above. At last one day I saw a girl. No, it was not she, but her hair was similar to hers in Hugh, and the impulse to follow her was irresistible. I did more than that. I spoke to her. I asked her if she could tell me anything of one whose locks were golden red like hers. But I need not tell you what I said, nor what she replied with a gentle delicacy that was almost a shock to me as showing from what heights to what depths a woman can fall. Enough that nothing passed between us beyond what I have intimated, and that in all she said she gave me no news of Letra. Next day I started for the rambling old house in Vermont. If happily in the spot where I first saw her I might come upon some clue to her present whereabouts. But the old inn was deserted, and whatever hope I may have had in that direction perished with the rest. Concerning the contents of that burrow drawer above I can say nothing. If, as I scarcely dare to hope, they should prove to have been indeed brought here by the girl who has since disappeared so strangely, who knows but what in those folded garments a clue is given, which will lead me at last to the knowledge for which I would now barter all I possess, my wife. But I can mention her name no more till the question that now assails us is set at rest. Mrs. Daniels must, but at that moment the door opened, and Mrs. Daniels came in. CHAPTER XIV OF A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Nicole Carle, St. Louis, Missouri, February 2008. A Strange Disappearance by Anna Catherine Green CHAPTER XIV. Mrs. Daniels She still wore her bonnet in shawl, and her face was like marble. You want me? She said with a hurried look towards Mr. Blake that had as much fear as surprise in it. Yes, remember that gentleman moving towards her with an effort we could very well appreciate. Mrs. Daniels, who was the girl you harbored in that room above us for so long? Speak. What was her name, and where did she come from? The housekeeper trembling in every limb cast us one hurried appeal. Speak, re-echoed Mr. Grice, the time for secrecy has passed. Oh, she cried, sinking into a chair from sheer inability to stand. It was your wife, Mr. Blake, the young creature you—ah! All the agony, the hopelessness, the love, the passion of those last few months flashed up in that word. She stopped as if she had been shot, but seeing the hand which he had hurriedly raised, fall slowly before him, went on with a burst. Oh, sir, she made me swear on my knees I would never betray her, no matter what happened, not when two weeks after your father died she came to the house and asking for me, told me all her story and all her love, how she could not reconcile it with her idea of a wife's duty to live under any other roof than that of her husband, and lifting off the black wig which she wore showed me how altered she had made herself by that simple change, in her case more marked by the fact that her eyes were in keeping with black hair, while with her own bright locks they always gave you a shock as if something strange and haunting. I gave up my will as if forced by a magnetic power, and not only opened the house to her but my heart as well, swearing to all she demanded and keeping my oath too, as I would preserve my soul from sin and my life from the knife of the destroyer. But when she went broke from the pallid lips of the man before her, when she was taken from the house, what then? Ah! returned the agitated woman, what then do you not think I suffered to be held by my oath and oath I was satisfied she would wish kept even at this crisis, yet knowing all the while she was drifting away into some evil that you, if you knew who she was, would give your life to avert from your honor, if not from her innocent head. To see you cold, indifferent, absorbed in other things, while she, who would have perished any day for your happiness, was losing her life, perhaps, in the clutches of those horrible villains, do not ask me to tell you what I have suffered since she went. I can never tell you, innocent, tender, noble-hearted creature that she was. Was? His hand clutched his heart, as if it had been seized by a deathly spasm. Why do you say was? Because I have just come from the morgue where she lies dead. No! No! came in a low shriek from his lips. That is not she. That is another woman, like her perhaps, but not she. Would to God you were right, but the long golden braids, such hair as hers I never saw on any one before. Mr. Blake is right, I broken, for I could not endure this scene any longer. The woman taken out of the East River today has been both seen and spoken to by him, and not that long since. He should know if it was his wife. And isn't it? No, a thousand times no, the girl was a perfect stranger. The assurance seemed to lift a leaden weight from her heart. Oh, thank God, she murmured dropping with an irresistible impulse on her knees, then with a sudden return of her old tremble. But I was only to reveal her secret in case of her death. What have I done? Oh, what have I done? Her only hope lay in my faithfulness. Mr. Blake, leaning heavily on the table before him, looked in her face. Mrs. Daniels, he said, I love my wife. Her hope now lies in me. She leaped to her feet with a joyous bound. You love her? Oh, thank God! she again reiterated, but this time in a low murmur to herself. Thank God! And weeping with unrestrained joy, she drew back into a corner. Of course after that, all that remained for us to do was to lay our heads together and consult as to the best method of renewing our search for the unhappy girl, now rendered of double interest to us by the facts with which we had just been made acquainted. That she had been forced away from the roof that sheltered her by the power of her father and brother was, of course, no longer open to doubt. To discover them, therefore, meant to recover her. Do you wonder, then, that from the moment we left Mr. Blake's house, the capture of that brace of thieves became the leading purpose in our two lives? End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Of A Strange Disappearance This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Nicole Carl, St. Louis, Missouri, February 2008. A Strange Disappearance by Anna Catherine Green Chapter 15 A Convab Next morning Mr. Grice and I met in serious consultation. How and in what direction should we extend the inquiries necessary to a discovery of these Schoenmarkers? I advise a thorough overhauling of the German quarter, said my superior. Schmidt and Rosenthal will help us, and the result ought to be satisfactory. But I shook my head at this. I don't believe, said I, that they will hide among their own people. You must remember they are not alone, but have with them a young woman of somewhat distinguished appearance, whose presence in a crowded district like that would be sure to awaken Gossip, something which above all else they must want to avoid. That is true, the Germans are a dreadful race for Gossip. If they dared to ill-dress her, or ill-treat her, it would be different. But she is a valuable piece of property to them, you see, a choice a lot of goods, which it is for their interest to preserve in first-class condition till the day comes for its disposal. For I presume you have no doubt that it is for the purpose of extorting money from Mr. Blake that they have carried off his young wife. For that reason, or one similar, he is a man of resources. They may have hoped he would help them to escape the country. If they don't hide in the German quarter, they certainly won't in the Italian, French, or Irish. What they want is to keep close, and rouse no questions. I think they will be found to have gone up the river somewhere, or over to Jersey. Hoboken wouldn't be a bad place to send Schmidt to. You forget what it is they've got on their minds. Besides, no conspicuous parties such as they could live in a rural district without attracting more attention than in the most crowded tenement house in the city. Where do you think, then, they would be liable to go? Well, my most matured thought on the subject returned Mr. Grice after a moment of liberation is this. You say, and I agree, that they have hampered themselves with this woman at this time for the purpose of using her, hereafter, in a scheme of blackmail upon Mr. Blake. He, then, must be the object about which their thoughts revolve, and toward which whatever operations or plans they may be engaged upon must tend. What follows? When a company of men have made up their minds to rob a bank, what is the first thing they do? They hire, if possible, a house next to the special building they intend to enter, and for months work upon the secret passage through which they hope to reach the safe and its contents, or they make friends with the watchman that guards its treasures, and the janitor who opens and shuts the doors. In short, they hang about their prey before they pounce upon it. And so will these shone-mockers do in the somewhat different robbery which they plan sooner or later to effect. Whatever may keep them close at this moment, Mr. Blake and Mr. Blake's house is the point toward which their eyes are turned, and if we had time—but we haven't, I broke in impetuously—it is horrible to think of that grand woman languishing away in the power of such rascals. If we had time, Mr. Grice persisted, all it would be necessary to do would be to wait. They would come into our hands as easily and naturally as a hawk into the snare of the fowler. But as you say, we have not, and therefore I would recommend a little beating of the bush directly about Mr. Blake's house. For if all my experience is not at fault, those men are already within eye-shot of the prey they intend to run down. But, said I, I have been living myself in that very neighborhood and know by this time the ways of every house in the vicinity. There is not a spot up and down the avenue for ten blocks where they could hide for two days, much less two weeks. And as for the side streets, why I could tell you the names of those who live in each house for considerable distance. Yet, if you say so, I will go to work. Do, and meanwhile Schmidt and Rosenthal shall rummage the German quarter, and even go through Williamsburg and Hoboken. The end justifies any amount of labor that can be spent upon this matter. And you, I asked, will do my part when you have done yours. And what success did I meet, the best in the world, and by what means did I attain it? By that of the simplest, prettiest clue I ever came upon. But let me explain. When, after a weary some day spent in an ineffectual search through the neighborhood, I went home to my room, which, as you remember, was a front one in a lodging house on the opposite corner from Mr. Blake, I was so absorbed in mind and perhaps I may say shaken and nerve by the strain under which I had been laboring for some time now that I stumbled up an extra flight of stairs, and without any suspicion of the fact, tried the door of the room directly over mine. It is a wonder to me now that I could have made the mistake, for the halls were totally dissimilar, the one above being much more cut up than the one below, besides being flanked by a greater number of doors. But the intoxication of the mind is not far removed from that of the body, and, as I say, it was not till I had tried the door and found it locked that I became aware of the mistake I had made. With the foolish sense of shame that always overcomes us at the committal of any such trivial error I stumbled hastily back when my foot trod upon something that broke under my weight. I never let even small things pass without some notice. Stooping, then, for what I had thus inadvertently crushed, I carried it to where a single gas jet turned down very low, made a partial light in the long hall, and, examining it, found it to be a piece of red chalk. What was there in that simple fact to make me start, and hastily recall one or two half-forgotten incidents which, what's brought to mind, awoke a train of thought that led to the discovery and capture of these two desperate thieves? I will tell you. I don't remember now whether, in my account of the visit I paid to the Shone-Maker's house in Vermont, I informed you of the red cross I noticed scrawled on the panel of one of the doors. It seemed a trivial thing at the time, and made little or no impression upon me, the chances being that I should never have thought of it again if I had not come upon the article just mentioned at a moment when my mind was full of those very Shone-Makers. But remembered now, together with another half-forgotten fact, that some days previous I had been told by the woman who kept the house I was in, that the parties over my head—two men and a woman, I believe, she said—were giving her some trouble, but that they paid well, and therefore she did not like to turn them out. It aroused a vague suspicion in my mind, and led to my walking back to the door I had endeavored to open, in my abstraction, and carefully looking at it. It was plain and white, rather rude or of make than those below, but offering no inducements for prolonged scrutiny. But not so with the one that stood at right ankles to it on the left, full in the center of that I beheld distinctly scrawled, probably with the very piece of chalk I then held, a red cross precisely similar in outline to the one I had seen a few days before on the panel of the Shone-Makers door at Grandby. The discovery sent a thrill over me that almost raised my hair on end. Was then this famous trio to be found in the very house in which I had myself been living for a week or more, over my head, in fact? I could not withdraw my gaze from the mysterious looking object. I bent near, I listened, I heard what sounded like the suppressed snore of a powerful man, and almost had to lay hold of myself to prevent my hand from pushing open that closed door and my feet from entering. As it was, I did finger the knob a little, but an extra loud snore from within reminded me, by its suggestion of strength, that I was but a small man, and that in this case and at this hour discretion was the better part of valor. I therefore withdrew, but for the whole night lay awake, listening, to catch any sounds that might come from above, and going so far as to plan what I would do if it should be proved that I was indeed upon the trail of the men I was so anxious to encounter. With the breaking of day I was upon my feet. A rude step had gone up the stairs a few minutes before, and I was all alert to follow. But I presently considered that my wisest course would be to sound the landlady and learn, if possible, with what sort of characters I had to deal. Routing her out of the kitchen, where at that early hour she was already engaged in domestic duties, I drew her into a retired corner and put my questions. She was not backward in replying. She had conceived an innocent liking for me in the short time I had been with her, a display of weakness for which I was, myself, perhaps as much to blame as she, and was only too ready to pour out her griefs into my sympathizing ear. For those men were a grief to her, acceptable as was the money they were careful to provide her with. They were not only always in the house, that is, one of them, smoking his old pipe and blackening up the walls, but they looked so shabby and kept the girls so close, and if they did go out came in at such unheard of hours. It was enough to drive her crazy, yet the money, the money—yes, said I, I know—and the money ought to make you overlook all the small disagreeablenesses you mention. What is a landlady without patience? And I urged her not to turn them out. But the girls she went on, so nice, so quiet, so sick-looking. I cannot stand it to see her cooped up in that small room, always watched over by one or both of those burly wretches. The old man says she is his daughter, and she does not deny it, but I would as soon think of that little rosy child you see cooing in the window over the way, belonging to the beggar going in at the gate, as of her with her ladylike ways having any connection with him and his rough-acting son. You ought to see her—that is just what I want to do, interrupted I, not because you have tempted my fancy by a recital of her charms, I hasten to add, but because she is, if I don't mistake, a woman for whose discovery and rescue a large sum of money has been offered. And without further disguise I acquainted the startled woman before me with the fact that I was not, as she had always considered, the clerk out of employment whose daily business it was to sally forth inquest of a situation but a member of the city police. She was duly impressed and easily persuaded to second all my operations as far as her poor wits would allow, giving me free range of her upper story, and above all, promising that secrecy without which all my finely laid plans for capturing the robes without raising a scandal would fall headlong to the ground. Behold me, then, by noon of that same day, domiciled in an apartment next to the one whose door bore the scarlet sign which had aroused within me such feverish hopes the night before. Clad in the seedy garments of a broken-down French artist whose acquaintance I had once made, with something of his air and general appearance, and with a few of his wretched dobs hung about on the white-washed wall, I commenced with every prospect of success as I thought, that quiet espionage of the hall and its inhabitants which I considered necessary to a proper attainment of the end I had in view. A racking cough was one of the peculiarities of my friend, and determined to assume the character in Toto, I allowed myself to startle the silence now and then with a series of gasps and chokings that, whether agreeable or not, certainly were of a character to show that I had no desire to conceal my presence from those I had come among. Indeed it was my desire to acquaint them as fully and as soon as possible with the fact of their having a neighbor, a weak-eyed, half-alive innocent to be sure, but yet a neighbor who would keep his door open, night and day, for the warmth of the hall, of course, and who, with a fretful habit of an old man who had once been a gentleman and a beau, went rambling about through the hall speaking to those he met and expecting a civil word in return. When he was not rambling or coughing he made architectural monsters out of cardboard, wherewith to tempt the pennies out of the pockets of unwary children, and employment that kept him chained to a small table in the center of his room, directly opposite the open door. As I expected I had scarcely given way to three separate fits of coughing, when the door next to me opened with a jerk and a rough voice called out, Who's that making all that to do about here? If you don't stop that infernal noise in a hurry, a soft voice interrupted him and he drew back. I will go see, said those gentle tones, and Lutra Blake, for I knew it was she before the skirt of her robe had advanced beyond the door, stepped out into the hall. I was yet bent over my work when she paused before me. The fact is I did not dare look up. The moment was one of such importance to me. You have a dreadful cough, said she, with that low ring of sympathy in her voice that goes unconsciously to the heart. Is there no help for it? I pushed back my work, drew my hand over my eyes. I did not need to make it tremble and glanced up. No, said I, with a shake of my head. But it is not always so bad. I beg your pardon, miss, if it disturbs you. She threw back the shawl which she had held drawn tightly over her head, and advanced with an easy gliding step close to my side. You do not disturb me, but my father is—is, well, a trifle cross sometimes, and if you should speak up a little harsh now and then, you must not mind. I am sorry you are so ill. What is there in some woman's look, some woman's touch, that more than all beauty goes to the heart and seduces it? As she stood there before me in her dark, worsted dress and coarse shawl, with her locks simply braided and her whole person undignified by art, and ungraced by ornament, she seemed just by the power of her expression and the witchery of her manner the loveliest woman I had ever beheld. You are very kind, very good, I murmured, half ashamed of my disguise, though it was assumed for the purpose of rescuing her. Your sympathy goes to my heart. Then, as a deep growl of impatience rose from the room at my side, I motioned her to go and not irritate the man who seemed to have such control over her. In a minute, answered she, first tell me what you are making. So I told her, and in the course of telling, let drop such other facts about my fancy life as I wished to have known to her and threw her to her father. She looked sweetly interested, and more than once turned upon me that dark eye, of which I had heard so much, full of tears that wore as much for me, scamp that I was, as for her own secret trouble. But the growls becoming more and more impatient, she speedily turned to go, repeating, however, as she did so. Now, remember what I say, you are not to be troubled if they do speak cross to you. They make noise enough themselves sometimes, as you will doubtless be assured of tonight. And the lips which seemed to have grown stiff and cold with her misery actually softened into something like a smile. The nod which I gave her in return had the solemnity of a vow in it. My mind thus assured as to the correctness of my suspicions, and the way thus paved to the carrying out of my plans, I allowed some few days to elapse without further action on my part. My motive was to acquaint myself as fully as possible with the habits and ways of these two desperate men before making the attempt to capture them upon which so many interests hung. For a while I felt it would be highly creditable to my sagacity, as well as valuable to my reputation as a detective, to restore these escaped convicts in any way possible into the hands of justice. My chief ambition, after all, was to so manage the affair as to save the wife of Mr. Blake, not only from the consequences of their despair, but from the publicity and scandal attendant upon the open arrest of two heavily armed men. Strategy, therefore, rather than force, was to be employed, and strategy to be successful must be founded upon the most thorough knowledge of the matter with which one has to deal. Three days, then, did I give to the acquiring of that knowledge, the result of which was the possession of the following facts—one, that the landlady was right when she told me the girl was never left alone, one of the men, if not the father, then the son, always remaining with her. Two, that while thus guarded she was not so restricted, but that she had the liberty of walking in the hall, though never for any length of time. Three, that the cross on the door seemed to possess some secret meaning connected with their presence in the house, it having been erased one evening when the whole three went out on some matter or other, only to be chalked on again when, in an hour or so later, father and daughter returned alone. Four, that it was the father and not the son who made such purchases as were needed, while it was the son and not the father who carried on whatever operations they had on hand, nightfall being the favorite hour for the one and midnight for the other, though it not infrequently happened that the latter sauntered out for a short time also in the afternoon, probably for the drink he could not go long without. Five, that they were men of great strength but little alertness, the stray glimpse inside had of them revealing a breath of back that was truly formidable, if it had not been joined to a heaviness of motion, that proclaimed a certain solidity of mind that was eminently in our favor. How best to use these facts in the building up of a matured plan of action, then, was the problem. By noon of a certain day I believed it to have been solved, and reluctant as I was to leave the spot of my espionage, even for the hour or too necessary, to a visit to headquarters, I found myself compelled to do so. Packing up in a small basket I had for the purpose, the little articles I had been engaged during the last few days in making, I gave way to a final fit of coughing so hollow and sepulchre in its tone, that it awoke a curse from the next room, deep as the growl of a wild beast, and still continuing, finally brought Lutra to the door, with that look of compassion on her face that always called up a flush to my cheek, whether I wished it or no. Ah, monsieur, I'm afraid your cough is very bad today. Oh, I see, you have been getting ready to go out. Come back here, broken a heavy voice from the room she had left. What do you mean by running off to Palaver with that old rascal every time he opens his battery of a cough? A smile that went through me like the cut of a knife flashed for a moment on her face. My father is in one of his impatient moods, said she. You had better go. I hope you will be successful, she murmured, glancing wistfully at my basket. What is that? Again came thundering on our ears. Successful? What are you two up to? And we heard the rough clatter of advancing steps. Go, said she, you are weak and old, and when you come back try and not cough. And she gave me a gentle push towards the door. When I come back, I began, but was forced to pause. The elder shone-maker, having by this time reached the open doorway, where he stood frowning in upon us in a way that made my heart stand still for her. What are you two talking about, said he, and what have you got in your basket there? He continued with a stride forward that shook the floor. Only some little toys that he has been making, and is now going out to sell, was her low answer given with a quick deprecatory gesture such as I doubt if she ever used for herself. Nothing more, asked he in German, with a red glare in the eye he turned towards her. Nothing more, replied she in the same tongue, you may believe me. He gave a deep growl and turned away. If there was, said he, you know what would happen. And unheeding the wild keen shutter that seized her at the word, making her insensible for the moment to all and everything about her, he laid one heavy hand upon her slight shoulder and led her from the room. I waited no longer than was necessary to carry my feeble and faltering steps appropriately down the stairs to reach the floor below and gain the landlady's presence. Do you go up, said I, and sit on those stairs till I come back. If you hear the least cry of pain or sound of struggle from that young girl's room, do you call it once for help? I will have a policeman standing on the corner below. The good woman nodded and proceeded at once to take up her work-basket. Lucky there is a window up there so I can see, I heard her mutter. I have no time to throw away, even on deeds of charity. Notwithstanding which precaution, I was in constant anxiety during my absence, an absence necessarily prolonged as I had to stop and explain matters to the superintendent, as well as hunt up Mr. Grice and get his consent to assist me in the matter of the impending arrest. I found the latter in his own home and more than enthusiastic upon the subject. Well, said he after I had informed him of the discoveries I had made, the faith seemed to prosper you in this. I have not received an inkling of light upon the matter since I parted from you at Mr. Blake's house. By the way, I saw that gentleman this morning, and I tell you we will find him a grateful man if this affair can be resolved satisfactorily. That is good, said I. Gratitude is what we want. Then, shortly, perhaps it is no more than our duty to let him know that his wife is safe and under my eye, though I would by no means advocate his knowing just how near him she is, till the moment comes when he is wanted, or we shall have a lover's impetuosity to deal with, as well as all the rest. Then, with a hurried remembrance of a possible contingency, went on to say, But by the way, in case we should need the cooperation of Mrs. Blake in what we have before us, you had better get a line written in French from Mrs. Daniels, expressive of her belief in Mr. Blake's present affection for his wife. The latter will not otherwise trust us, or understand that we are to be obeyed in whatever we may demand. Let it be unsigned and without names in case of accident, and if the housekeeper don't understand French, tell her to get someone to help her that does, only be sure that the handwriting employed is her own. Mr. Gries seemed to perceive the wisdom of this precaution and promised to procure me such a note by a certain hour, after which I related to him the various other details of the capture, such as I had planned it, meeting to my secret gratification and unqualified approval, that went far towards alleviating that wound to my pride, which I had received from him in the beginning of this affair. Let all things proceed as you have determined, and we shall accomplish something, that it will be a lifelong satisfaction to remember, said he, but you must be prepared for some twist of the screw which you do not anticipate. I never knew anything to go off just as one prognosticates it must, except once, he added thoughtfully, and then it was with a surprise attached to it that well nigh upset me, not withstanding on my preparations. You won a great success that day, remarked I. I hope the fates will be as propitious to me tomorrow. Failure now would break my heart. But you won't fail, exclaimed he. I myself am resolved to see you through this matter with credit. And in this assurance I returned to my lodgings, where I found the landlady sitting where I had left her, darning her twenty-third sock. I have to mend for a dozen men and three boys, said she, and the boys are the worst by a heapsight. Look at that, will you, holding up a darn with a bit of stocking attached. That hole was made in playing shinny. I uttered my condolences and asked if any sound or disturbance had reached her ears from above. Oh, no, all is right up there. I've scarcely heard a whisper since you've been gone. I gave her a pat on the chin scarcely consistent with my aged and toitering mean, and proceeded to shamble painfully to my room. End of CHAPTER XVI. CHAPTER XVII. THE CAPTURE. CHAPTER XVI. THE CAPTURE. Promptly next morning at the designated hour came the little note promised me by Mr. Grace. It was put in my hand with many sly winks by the landlady herself, who developed at this crisis quite an adaptation for it, if not absolute love of intrigue and mystery. Glancing over it, it was unsealed, and finding it entirely unintelligible, I took it for granted it was all right, and put it by till chance, or if that failed strategy, should give me an opportunity to communicate with Mrs. Blake. An hour passed. The doors of their rooms remained unclosed. A half hour more dragged its slow minutes away, and no sound had come from their precincts, save now and then a mumbled word of parley between father and son. A short command to the daughter, or a not to be restrained oath of annoyance from one or both of the heavy-limbed brutes, as something was said or done to disturb them in their insolent repose. At last my impatience was to be no longer restrained. Rising I took a bold resolution. If the mountain would not come to Muhammad, Muhammad would go to the mountain. Taking my letter in hand, I deliberately proceeded to the door marked with the ominous red cross and knocked. A surprised snarl from within, followed by a sudden shuffling of feet, as the two men leaped upright from what I presumed had been a recumbent position, warned me to be ready to face defiance, if not the fury of despair. And curbing with a determined effort the slightest sinking of heart, natural to a man of my make on the threshold of a very doubtful adventure, I awaited with as much apparent unconcern as possible. The quick advance of that light foot, which seemed to be ready to perform all the biddings of these hardened wretches, much as it shrunk from following in the ways of their infamy. Ah, miss! said I, as the door opened, revealing in the gap her white face clouded with some new and sudden apprehension. I beg your pardon, but I am an old man, and I got a letter today and my eyes are so weak with the work I've been doing that I cannot read it. It is from someone I love, and would you be so kind as to read off the words for me, and so relieve an old man from his anxiety? The murmur of suspicion behind her warned her to throw open wide the door. Certainly, said she, if I can, taking the paper in her hand, just let me get a squint at that first. Said a sullen voice behind her, and the youngest of the two shone-makers stepped forward and tore the paper out of her grasp. You are too suspicious, murmured she, looking after them with the first assumption of that air of power and determination which I had heard so eloquently described by the man who loved her. There is nothing in those lines which concerns us. Let me have them back. You hold your tongue, was the brutal reply as the rough man opened the folded paper, and read or tried to read what was written within. Blasted its French, was his slow exclamation after a moment spent in this way. See, and he thrust it towards his father who stood frowning heavily a few feet off. Of course it's French, cried the girl. Would you write a note in English to father there? The man's friends are French like himself, and must write in their own language. Here, take it and read it out. Commanded her father. And mind you tell us what it means. I'll have nothing going on here that I don't understand. Read me the French word's first miss, said I. It is my letter, and I want to know what my friend has to say to me. Nodding at me with a gentle look, she cast her eyes on the paper and began to read. Calme-vous, mon ami. Il vous aime, et il vous cherche. Dans quatre heures, vous serez heureuse. Allons du courage, et ce tout soyez maître de vous-même. Thanks, I exclaimed, in a calm matter-of-fact way, as I perceived the sudden tremor that seized her, as she recognized the handwriting, and realized that the words were for her. My friend says he will pay my week's rent and bids me be at home to receive him, said I, turning upon the two ferocious faces peering over her shoulder, with a look of meek unsuspiciousness in my eye that in a theater would have brought down the house. Is that what those words say you? asked the father, pointing over her shoulder to the paper she held. I will translate for you word by word what it says, replied she, nerving herself for the crisis till her face was like marble. Though I could see she could not prevent the gleam of secret rapture that had visited her from flashing fitfully across it. Calme-vous, mon ami. Do not be afraid, my friend. Il vous aime, et il vous cherche. He loves you and is hunting for you. Dans quatre heures, vous serez heureuse. In four hours you will be happy. Allons de courage, et surtout soyez maître, de vous même. Then take courage and above all preserve your self-possession. It is the French way of expressing oneself, observed she. I am glad your friend is disposed to help you, she continued, giving me back the letter with a smile. I am afraid you needed it. In a sort of maze I folded up the letter, bowed my very humble thanks to her and shuffled slowly back. The fact is, I had no words. I was utterly dumbfounded. Halfway through that letter, with whose contents you must remember I was unacquainted, I would have given my whole chance of expected reward to have stopped her. Read out such words as those before these men. Was she crazy? But how naturally, at the conclusion, did she with a word make its language seem consistent with the meaning I had given it? With a fresh sense of my obligation to her, I hurried to my room, there to count out the minutes of another long hour in anxious expectation of her making that endeavour to communicate with me, which her new hopes and fears must force her to feel almost necessary to her existence. At length my confidence in her was rewarded. Coming out into the hall, she hurried past my door, her finger on her lip. I immediately rose and stood on the threshold with another paper in my hand, which I had prepared against this opportunity. As she glided back I put it in her hand, and warning her with a look not to speak, resumed my usual occupation. The words I had written were as follows. At, or as near the time as possible of your brothers going out, you are to come to this room wrapped in an extra skirt, and with your shawl over your head. Leave the skirt and shawl behind you, and withdraw it once to the room at the head of the stairs. You are not to speak, and you are not to vary from the plan thus laid down. Your brother and father are to be arrested, whether or no. But if you will do as this commands, they will be arrested without bloodshed and without shame to one you know. Her face while she read these lines was a study, but I dared not soften toward it. Dropping the paper from her hand, she gave me one inquiring look, but I pointed determinedly to the words lying upward on the floor, and would listen to no appeal. My resolve had its effect. Bowing her head with a sorrowful gesture, she laid her hand on her heart, looked up and glided from the room. I took up that paper and tore it into bits. And now for the first time since I had been in the house, I closed the door of my room. I had a part to perform that rendered the dropping of my disguise indispensable. The old French artist had finished his work, and henceforth must merge into queue the detective. Shortly before two o'clock my assistants began to arrive. First Mr. Grice appeared on the scene and was stowed away in a large room on the other side of mine. Next, two of the most agile, as well as muscular men in the force who, thanks to having taken off their shoes in the lower hall, gained the same refuge without wakening the suspicions of those we were anxious to surprise. Lastly, the landlady who went into the closet to which I had bitten Mrs. Blake retire after leaving in my room the articles I had mentioned. All was now ready and waiting for the departure of the youngest show-and-maker. Would he disappoint us and remain at home that day? Had any suspicions been awakened in the stolid breasts of these men, that would serve to make them more watchful than usual against running unnecessary risks? No. At or near the time for the clock to strike two, their door opened and the tread of a lumbering foot was heard in the hall. On it came passing my room with a rude stamping that gradually grew less distinct as the hardy rough went down the corridor, brushing the wall behind which Mr. Grice and his men lay concealed with his thick cane. And even stopping to light his pipe in front of the small apartment where cowered our good landlady with her eternal basket of mending in her lap. At length all was quiet and throwing open my door I withdrew into a small closet connected with my room to wait with indescribable impatience the appearance of Mrs. Blake. She came in a very few minutes, remained for an instant and departed, leaving behind her as I had requested, the skirt and shawl, in which she had left her father's presence. I had once endued myself in these articles of apparel, taking care to draw the shawl well over my head and with a pocket handkerchief to my face. A proceeding made natural enough by the sneeze which at that very moment I took care should assail me. Walked boldly back to the room from which she had just come. The door was, of course, ajar, and as I swung it open with his near assimilation of her manner as possible, the vision of her powerful father lolling on a bench directly before me offered anything but an encouraging spectacle to my eyes. But doubling myself almost together with his ladylike and achoo as my masculine nostrils would allow, I succeeded in closing the door and reaching a low stool by the window without calling from him anything worse than a fretful, I hope you are not going to bark too. I did not reply to this, of course, but sat with my face turned towards the street in an attitude which I hoped would awaken his attention sufficiently to cause him to get up and come over to my side. For as he sat face to the door it would be impossible to take him by surprise. And that, now that I saw what a huge and muscular creature he was, seemed to me to be the only safe method before us. But whether from the sullenness of his disposition, or the very evident laziness of the moment, he manifested no disposition to move, and hearing, or thinking I did, the stealthy advance of Mr. Grice and his companions down the hall, I allowed myself to give way to a suppressed exclamation, and leaning forward pressed my forehead against the pain of glass before me as if something of absorbing interest had just taken place in the street beneath. His fears at once took alarm, bounding up with a curse he strode towards me, muttering, What's up now? What's that you are looking at? Reaching my side just as Mr. Grice and his two men softly opened the door, and with a quick leap through their arms about him, closing upon him with a force he could not resist, desperate as he was, and mighty in the huge strength of an unusually developed muscular organization. You, you girl there are to blame for this, came mingled with curses from his lips, as with one huge pant he submitted to his captors. Only let me get my hands well upon you once damn it. He suddenly exclaimed, dragging the whole three men forward in his effort to get his mouth down to my ear. Go and rub that sign out on the door or I'll, you know what I'll do well enough. Do you hear? Rising still with face averted, I proceeded to do what he asked, but in another moment seeing that he had been effectually bound and gagged, I took out the piece of red chalk I had kept in my pocket and deliberately chalked it on again, after which operation I came back and took my seat as before on the low stool by the window. The object now was to secure the second rascal in the same way we had the first, and for this purpose Mr. Grice ordered the now helpless giant to be dragged into the adjoining small room, formally occupied by Mrs. Blake, where he and his men likewise took up their station, leaving me to confront as best I might the surprise and consternation of the one whose return we now awaited. I did not shrink. With that brave woman's garments drawn about me, something of her dauntless spirit seemed to invade my soul, and though I expected, but let that come in its place, I am not here to interest you in myself or my selfish thoughts. A half hour passed, he had never lingered away so long before, or so it seemed, and I was beginning to wonder if we should have to keep up this strain of nerve for hours, when the heavy tread was again heard in the hall, and with a blow of the fist that argued anger or brutal impatience, he flung open the door and came in. I did not turn my head. Where's father? he growled, stopping where he was a foot or so from the door. I shook my head with a slight gesture and remained looking out. He brought his cane down on the floor with a thump. What do you mean by sitting there staring out of the window like mad and not answering when I ask you a decent question? Still, I made no reply. Provoked beyond endurance, yet held in check by that vague sense of danger in the air, which while not amounting to apprehension, is often sufficient to hold back from advance the most daring foot, he stood glaring at me in what I felt to be a very ferocious attitude, but made no offer to move. Instantly I rose and still looking out of the window, made with my hand what appeared to be a signal to someone on the opposite side of the way. The ruse was effective. With an oath that rings in my ears yet, he lifted his heavy cane and advanced upon me with a bound, only to meet the same fate as his father at the hands of the watchful detectives. Not, however, before that heavy cane came down upon my head in a way to lay me in a heap at his feet and to sow the seeds of that blinding headache which has afflicted me by spells ever since. But this termination of the affair was no more than I had feared from the beginning, and indeed it was as much to protect Mrs. Blake from the wrath of these men as from any requirements of the situation I had assumed the disguise I then wore. I therefore did not allow this mishap to greatly trouble me, unpleasant as it was at the time, but as soon as ever I could do so rose from the floor and throwing off my strange habiliments. Proceeded to finish up to my satisfaction, the work already so successfully begun. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librabox.org. This reading by Lucy Burgoyne. A Strange Disappearance by Anna Catherine Green Chapter 18 Love and Duty Dismissing the men who had assisted us in the capture of these two Harley villains, we ranged our prisoners before us. Now, said Mr. Grice, no fuss and no swearing, you are in for it, and you might as well take it quietly as any other way. Give me a clutch on that girl, that's all, said her father. Where is she? Let me see her. Every father has a right to see his own daughter. You shall see her, return my superior, but not till her husband is here to protect her. Her husband, ah, you know about that, do you? Groud the heavy voice of the son. A rich man they say he is, and a proud one. Let him come and look at us lying here like dogs, and say how he will enjoy having his wife's father and brother grinding away their lives in prison. Mr. Blake is coming, quote Mr. Grice, who by some pre-concerted signal from the window had drawn that gentleman across the street. He will tell you himself that he considers prison the best place for you. Blast you, but he, that he, what, inquired I, as the door opened and Mr. Blake, with a pale face, an agitated man, entered the room. The wretch did not answer, rousing from the cowering position in which they had both lain since their capture. The father and son struggled up in some sort of measure to their feet, and with hot, anxious eyes, surveyed the countenance of the gentleman before them. As if they felt their fate hung upon the expression of his pale face, the son was the first to speak. How do you do, brothering all, were his sullen and insulking words. Mr. Blake shuddered and cast a look around. My wife murmured he, she as well was the assurance given by Mr. Grice, and in a room not far from this. I will send for her if you say so. No, not yet, came in a sort of gasp. Let me look at these wretches first, and understand if I can what my wife has to suffer from her connection with them. Your wife broke in the father. What's that to do with it? The question is, how do you like it, and what will you do to get us clear of this thing? I will do nothing. Return, Mr. Blake. You amply merit your doom, and you shall suffer it to the end for all time. It will reguel in the papers, exclaim the son. The papers aren't to know nothing about it. I broke in. All knowledge of your connection with Mr. or Mrs. Blake is to be buried in this spot before we, or you, leave it. Not a word of her or him is to cross the lips of either of you from this hour. I have set that down as a condition, and it has got to be kept. You have, have you, thundered in chorus from father and son, and who are you to make conditions, and what do you think we are, that you expect us to keep them? Can you do any more than put us back from where we came from? The reply I took from my pocket the ring I had fished out at the ashes of their kitchen stove on that memorable visit to their house, and holding it up before their faces looked them steadily in the eye. A sudden wild glare followed by a bluish power that robbed their countenances of their usual semblance of daring ferocity answered me beyond my fondest hopes. I got that out of the stove where you had burned your prison clothing, said I. It is a cheap affair, but it will send you to the gallows if I choose to use it against you, the petal. Hush, exclaimed the father, in a low choked tone, greatly in contrast to any hair jet used in all our dealings with him. Throw that ring out of the window, and I promise to hold my tongue about any matter you don't want spoke of. I'm not a fool. Nor I was my quick reply as I restored the ring to my pocket. While that remains my possession together with certain facts concerning your habits in that old house of yours which have lately been made known to me, your life hangs by a thread I can any minute slip into. Mr Blake here has spent some portion of the night in your house, and knows how near it lies to a certain precipice, at the foot of which. Mean God, Father, why don't you say something, leaked in cow-to-accent from the sun's white lips. If they want us to keep quiet, let them say so, and not go talking about things that. Now look here, in to pose Mr Grice, stepping before them with a look that closed their mouths at once. I will just tell you what we propose to do. You are to go back to prison and serve your time out. There is no help for that, but as long as you behave yourself and continue absolutely silent regarding your relationship to the wife of this gentleman, you shall have paid into a certain bank that he will name a monthly sum that upon your dismissal from jail shall be paid you with whatever interest it may have accumulated. You are ready to promise that, are you not? He inquired, turning to Mr Blake. That gentleman bowed and named the sum, which was liberal enough, and the bank, but continued the detective, ignoring the sudden flash of eye that passed between the father and son. Let me, or any of us here, have a word having been uttered by you, which in the remotest way shall suggest that you have in the world such a connection as Mrs Blake, and the money not only stops going into the bank, but old scores shall be raked up against you with the zeal which if it does not stop your mouth in one way will in another, and that with the suddenness you will not altogether relish. The men with a dog dare from which the bravado had however fled turned and looked from one to the other a bus in a fearful, inquiring way that Julie confessed to the force of the impression made by these words upon their slow but not unimaginative minds. Do you three promise to keep our secret if we keep yours, muttered the father, with an uneasy glance at my pocket? We certainly do, was our solemn return. Very well, calling the girl, and let me just look at her then, before we go. We won't say nothing, continued he, seeing Mr Blake shrink. Only she is my daughter, and if I cannot bid her good-bye. Let him see his child, cried Mr Blake, turning with a shutter to the window. I wish it, added he. Straight way, with hasty foot, I left the room, going to the little closet where I had ordered his wife to remain concealed. I knocked and entered. She was crouched in an attitude of prayer on the floor. Her face buried in her hands, and a whole person breathing that agony of suspense that is a torture to the sensitive soul. Mrs Blake said I, dismissing the landlady who stood in helpless distress beside her. The arrest has been satisfactorily made, and your father calls for you to say goodbye, before going away with us. Will you come? But, my, my, Mr Blake, exclaimed she, leaping to her feet. I am sure I heard his footstep, in the hall. He is with your father and brother. It was that his command I came for you. A gleam hard to interpret flashed, for an instant over her face. With her eye on the door, she towered in her womanly dignity. While thoughts innumerable seemed to rush, in wild succession, through her mind. Will you not come? I urged. I, she paused. I will go see my father, she murmured. But, suddenly she trembled and grew back. A step was in the hall. On the threshold at her side, Mr Blake had come to reclaim his bride. Mr Blake, the word came from her in a low tone, shaken with the concentrated anguish of many a month of longing and despair. But there was no invitation in its sound. And he, who had held out his arms, stopped and surveying her with a certain deprecatory glance in his proud eye, said, You are right. I have first my acknowledgments to make and your forgiveness to ask before I can hope. No, no, she broke him. Your coming here is enough. I request no more, if you felt unkindly toward me. Unkindly, a world of love thrilled in that word. Blutra, I am your husband and rejoice that I am so. It is to lay the devotion of my heart and life at your feet that I seek your presence this hour. The year has taught me, I, what has not the year taught me of the worth of her I so recklessly threw from me on my wedding day. Blutra, he held out his hand, will you crown all your other acts of devotion with a pardon that will restore me to my manhood and that place in your esteem which I have covered above every other earthly good. Her face which had been raised to his with that earnest look we knew so well suffered with an ineffable smile, but still she did not lay her hand in his. And you say this to me in the very hour of my father's and brother's arrest, with the remembrance in your mind of their bound and object forms lying before you guarded by place, knowing too that they deserved their ignominy and the long imprisonment that awaits them. No, I say it on the day of the discovery and the restoration of that wife for whom I have long searched, and to whom, when found, I have no word to give but welcome, welcome, welcome. With the same deep smile she bowed her head. Now, let come what will, I could never again be unhappy, were the words I caught uttered in the lowest of undertones. But in another moment her head had regained its steady pause and a great change had passed over her manner. Mr. Blake said she, you are good, how good. I alone can know and truly appreciate who have lived in your house this last year and seen with eyes that missed nothing. Just what your surroundings are and have been for the earliest years of your proud life. That goodness must not lead you into the committal of an act you must and will repent to your dying day. Or if it does, I who have learned my duty in the school of adversity must show the courage of two and forbid what every secret instinct of my soul declares to be only provocative of shame and sorrow. You would take me to your heart as your wife. Do you realize what that means? I think I do, was his earnest reply, relieved from heartache, Lutra. Her smooth brow wrinkled with a sudden spasm of pain, but her firm lips did not quiver. It means, said she, drawing nearer but not with that approach which indicates yielding. It means, shamed to the proudest family that lives in the land. It means silence as regards are past blotted by suggestions of crime. An apprehension concerning a future across which the shadow of prison walls must for so many years lie. It means the hushing of certain words upon beloved lips. The turning of cherished eyes from visions where fathers and daughters eye. Brothers and sisters as they join together intend a companionship or loving embrace. It means, God help me to speak out, a home without the sanctity of memories. A husband without the honors he has been accustomed to enjoy. A wife with a fear gnawing like a servant into her breast. And children, yes, perhaps children from whose innocent lips the sacred word of grandfather can never fall without wakening a blush on the cheeks of their parents, which all their loves and prattle will be helpless to chase away. Lutra, your father and your brother have given their consent to go their dark way alone and trouble you no more. The shadow you speak of may lie on your heart, dear wife, for these men are of your own blood, but it need never invade the half stone beside which I ask you to sit. The world will never know whether you come with me or not, that Lutra Blake was Lutra Shoenmaker. Will you not then give me the happiness of striving to make such amends for the past, that you too will forget you ever bore any other name than the one you now honor so truly? Oh, do not, she began, but paused with the sudden control of her emotion that lifted her into an atmosphere almost wholly in its significance. Mr Blake said she, I am a woman and therefore weak to the voice of love pleading in my ear, but in one thing I am strong, and that is in my sense of what is due to the man I have sworn to honor. Eleven months ago I left you because your pleasure and my own dignity demanded it. Today I put by all the joy and exultation you offer, because your position as a gentleman and your happiness as a man equally requires it. My happiness as a man he broke in. Ah, Lutra, if you love me as I do you, I might perhaps yield she aloud with a faint smile, that I love you as a girl brought up amid surroundings from which her whole being recoiled. Must love the one who first brought light into her darkness, and opened up to her longing feet, the way to a life of culture, purity, and honor. I were the basest of women could I consent to repay such a boundless favor. But Lutra, here again broke in. You married me, knowing what your father and brother were capable of committing. Yes, yes, I was blinded by passion, a girl's passion, Mr Blake, born of glamour and gratitude, not the self-forgetting devotion of a woman who has tasted the bitterness of life, and so learned its lessons of sacrifice. I may not have thought, certainly I did not realize what I was doing. Besides, my father and brother were not convicted criminals at that time, however weak they had proved themselves under temptation. And then I believed I had left them behind me on the road of life. That we were sundered, irrevocably cut loose from all possible connection. But such ties are not to be snapped so easily. They found me, you see, and they will find me again. Never exclaimed their husband. They are as dead to you as if the grave had swallowed them. I have taken care of that. But the shame, you have not taken care of that. That exists and must. And while it does, I remain where I can meet it alone. I love you, God's Son, is not dearer to my eyes, that I will never cross your threshold as your wife, till the apropium can be cut loose from my skirts and the shadow uplifted from my brow. A queen with high thoughts in her eyes and brave hopes in her heart were not too good to enter that door with you. Shall a girl who has lived three weeks in an atmosphere of such crime and despair, that these rooms have often seemed to me the gateway to help carry there, even in secrecy, the effects of that atmosphere? I will cherish your goodness in my heart, but do not ask me to bury that heart in any more exalted spot than some humble country home, where my life may be spent in good deeds and my love in prayers for the man I hold dear, and because I hold dear, lead to his own high path among the straight and unshadowed courses of the world. And with a gesture that inexorably shut him off while it expressed the most touching appeal, she glided by him and took her way to the room where her father and brother awaited her presence. End of chapter 18