“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 let
us forth into the night; or the electric thrill that shot through me as
that 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 towards
us. With a low cry the young girl leaped towards a tree where to
my unbounded astonishment I beheld 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 snorted, gave a plunge of dismay and started away
from us down the road.
“‘We will wait,’ said Luttra.
“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 travelled 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 a 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, bedrabbled 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 whose
slumbers we had thus 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 shone 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--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--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 glance of her dark eye. ‘I was born for
hardship,’ said she, ‘but--’ and a sudden wild shudder seized her, ‘but
not for crime.’
“The word fell like a drop of blood wrung from her heart.
“‘Good heavens!’ cried I, ‘and must you--’
“‘No,’ rang from her lips in a clarion-like peal; ‘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 if 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 an
unwarrantable expense, she could not at once be brought to comprehend,
and till 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 of an hour of my time, or the labor 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 some one 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 belles that nightly thronged the
parlors 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. Wealth? 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, marry, 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 whose slowly descending weight he in vain
endeavors to escape.
“How or when the thought of Luttra 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 favor
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 protegee 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 Luttra. 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
waif with the appealing grateful eyes I had expected to encounter? this
tall and slender creature with an aureola of golden hair about a 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 embarassment 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 especial pains to conceal it at the time, though I acknowledge
that after our separation I did resort to such measures as I thought
necessary, to suppress what had become gall and wormwood 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 had 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 shutting 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
at it 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
elysian to 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, blotted, ay 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 aright?’ were 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’s stiff and pallid lips move silently as though
he would answer for me if he could, and summoning up what 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.
“O 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 aright,’ she murmured, and waited with a look that would
not be gainsaid.
“I could only bow my head, cursing the day I was born.
“‘Holman! Holman!’ came in agonized entreaty from the bed, ‘you will not
rob me of my daughter now?’
“Startled, I looked up. Luttra 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 a 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. Some one 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 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 here,’ and looking up I saw Mrs. Daniels
glide into the room.
“‘Mrs. Blake has gone, sir, I could not keep her.’”