“I cannot endure this,” came in one burst of feeling from the lips of
Mr. Blake. “She don’t know, she don’t realize--Sir,” cried he, suddenly
becoming conscious of my presence in the room, “will you be good enough
to see that this note,” he hastily scribbled one, “is carried across the
way to my house and given to Mrs. Daniels.”
I bowed assent, routed up one of the men in the next room and despatched
it at once.
“Perhaps she will listen to the voice of one of her own sex if not to
me,” said he; and began pacing the floor of the narrow room in which we
were, with a wildness of impatience that showed to what depths had sunk
the hope of gaining this lovely woman for his own.
Feeling myself no longer necessary in that spot, I followed where my
wishes led and entered the room where Luttra was bidding good-bye to her
father.
“I shall never forget,” I heard her say as I crossed the floor to where
Mr. Gryce stood looking out of the window, “that your blood runs in my
veins together with that of my gentle-hearted, never-to-be-forgotten
mother. Whatever my fate may be or wherever I may hide the head you have
bowed to the dust, be sure I shall always lift up my hands in prayer for
your repentance and return to an honest life. God grant that my prayers
may be heard and that I may yet receive at your hands, a father’s kindly
blessing.”
The only answer to this was a heavily muttered growl that gave but
little promise of any such peaceful termination to a deeply vicious
life. Hearing it, Mr. Gryce hastened to procure his men and remove the
hardened wretches from the spot. All through the preparations for their
departure, she stood and watched their sullen faces with a wild yearning
in her eye that could scarcely be denied, but when the door finally
closed upon them, and she was left standing there with no one in the
room but myself she steadied herself up as one who is conscious that all
the storms of heaven are about to break upon her; and turning slowly
to the door waited with arms crossed and a still determination upon her
brow, the coming of the feet of him whose resolve she felt must have, as
yet been only strengthened by her resistance.
She had not long to wait. Almost with the closing of the street door
upon the detectives and their prisoners, Mr. Blake followed by Mrs.
Daniels and another lady whose thick veil and long cloak but illy
concealed the patrician features and stately form of the Countess De
Mirac, entered the room.
The surprise had its effect; Luttra was evidently for the moment thrown
off her guard.
“Mrs. Daniels!” she breathed, holding out her hands with a longing
gesture.
“My dear mistress!” returned that good woman, taking those hands in hers
but in a respectful way that proved the constraint imposed upon her by
Mr. Blake’s presence. “Do I see you again and safe?”
“You must have thought I cared little for the anxiety you would be sure
to feel,” said that fair young mistress, gazing with earnestness into
the glad but tearful eyes of the housekeeper. “But indeed, I have
been in no position to communicate with you, nor could I do so without
risking that to protect which I so outraged my feelings as to leave the
house at all. I mean the life and welfare of its master, Mrs. Daniels.”
“Ha, what is that?” quoth Mr. Blake. “It was to save me, you consented
to follow them?”
“Yes; what else would have led me to such an action? They might have
killed me, I would not have cared, but when they began to utter threats
against you--”
“Mrs. Blake,” exclaimed Mrs. Daniels, catching hold of her mistress’s
uplifted hand, and pointing to a scar that slightly disfigured her white
arm a little above the wrist, “Mrs. Blake, what’s that?”
A pink flush, the first I had seen on her usually pale countenance, rose
for an instant to her cheeks, and she seemed to hesitate.
“It was not there when I last saw you, Mrs. Blake.”
“No,” was the slow reply, “I found myself forced that night to inflict
upon myself a little wound. It is nothing, let it go.”
“No, Luttra I cannot let it go,” said her husband, advancing towards her
with something like gentle command. “I must hear not only about this but
all the other occurrences of that night. How came they to find you in
the refuge you had attained?”
“I think,” said she in a low tone the underlying suffering of which
it would be hard to describe, “that it was not to seek me they first
invaded your house. They had heard you were a rich man, and the sight
of that ladder running up the side of the new extension was too much for
them. Indeed I know that it was for purposes of robbery they came, for
they had hired this room opposite you some days previous to making the
attempt. You see they were almost destitute of money and though they had
some buried in the cellar of the old house in Vermont, they dared not
leave the city to procure it. My brother was obliged to do so later,
however. It was a surprise to them seeing me in your house. They had
reached the roof of the extension and were just lifting up the corner of
the shade I had dropped across the open window--I always open my window
a few minutes before preparing to retire--when I rose from the chair in
which I had been brooding, and turned up the gas. I was combing my hair
at the time and so of course they recognized me. Instantly they gave
a secret signal I, alas, remembered only too well, and crouching back,
bade me put out the light that they might enter with safety. I was at
first too much startled to realize the consequences of my action, and
with some vague idea that they had discovered my retreat and come for
purposes of advice or assistance, I did what they bid. Immediately they
threw back the shade and came in, their huge figures looming frightfully
in the faint light made by a distant gas lamp in the street below.
‘What do you want?’ were my first words uttered in a voice I scarcely
recognized for my own; ‘why do you steal on me like this in the night
and through an open window fifty feet from the ground? Aren’t you afraid
you will be discovered and sent back to the prison from which you have
escaped?’ Their reply sent a chill through my blood and awoke me to a
realization of what I had done in thus allowing two escaped convicts
to enter a house not my own. ‘We want money and we’re not afraid of
anything now you are here.’ And without heeding my exclamation of
horror, they coolly told me that they would wait where they were till
the household was asleep, when they would expect me to show them the way
to the silver closet or what was better, the safe or wherever it was Mr.
Blake kept his money. I saw they took me for a servant, as indeed I was,
and for some minutes I managed to preserve that position in their eyes.
But when in a sudden burst of rage at my refusal to help them, they
pushed me aside and hurried to the door with the manifest intention of
going below, I forgot prudence in my fears and uttered some wild
appeal to them not to do injury to any one in the house for it was my
husband’s. Of course that disclosure had its natural effect.
“They stopped, but only to beset me with questions till the whole truth
came out. I could not have committed a worse folly than thus taking them
into my confidence. Instantly the advantages to be gained by using my
secret connection with so wealthy a man for the purpose of cowering me
and blackmailing him, seemed to strike both their minds at once, slow
as they usually are to receive impressions. The silver-closet and
money-safe sank to a comparatively insignificant position in their eyes,
and to get me out of the house, and with my happiness at stake, treat
with the honorable man who notwithstanding his non-approval of me as a
woman, still regarded me as his lawfully wedded wife, became in their
eyes a thing of such wonderful promise they were willing to run any and
every risk to test its value. But here to their great astonishment
I rebelled; astonishment because they could not realize my desiring
anything above money and the position to which they declared I was by
law entitled. In vain I pleaded my love; in vain I threatened exposure
of their plans if not whereabouts. The mine of gold which they fondly
believed they had stumbled upon unawares, promised too richly to be
easily abandoned. ‘You must go with us,’ said they, ‘if not peaceably
then by force,’ and they actually advanced upon me, upsetting a chair
and tearing down one of the curtains to which I clung. It was then I
committed that little act concerning which you questioned me. I wanted
to show them I was not to be moved by threats of that character; that I
did not even fear the shedding of my blood; and that they would only be
wasting their time in trying to sway me by hints of personal violence.
And they were a little impressed, sufficiently so at least to turn their
threats in another direction, awakening fears at last which I could not
conceal, much as I felt it would be policy to do so. Gathering up a few
articles I most prized, my wedding ring, Mr. Blake, and a photograph of
yourself that Mrs. Daniels had been kind enough to give me, I put on my
bonnet and cloak and said I would go with them, since they persisted in
requiring it. The fact is I no longer possessed motive or strength
to resist. Even your unexpected appearance at the door, Mrs. Daniels,
offered no prospect of hope. Arouse the house? what would that do?
only reveal my cherished secret and perhaps jeopardize the life of my
husband. Besides, they were my own near kin, remember, and so had some
little claim upon my consideration, at least to the point of my not
personally betraying them unless they menaced immediate and actual harm.
The escape by the window which would have been a difficult task for most
women to perform, was easy enough for me. I was brought up to wild
ways you know, and the descent of a ladder forty feet long was a
comparatively trivial thing for me to accomplish. It was the tearing
away from a life of silent peace, the reentrance of my soul into an
atmosphere of sin and deadly plotting, that was the hard thing, the
difficult dreadful thing which hung weights to my feet, and made me
well nigh mad. And it was this which at the sight of a policeman in the
street led me to make an effort to escape. But it was not successful.
Though I was fortunate enough to free myself from the grasp of my father
and brother, I reached the gate on ----- street only to encounter the
eyes of him whose displeasure I most feared, looking sternly upon me
from the other side. The shock was too much for me in my then weak and
unnerved condition. Without considering anything but the fact that he
never had known and never must, that I had been in the same house with
him for so long, I rushed back to the corner and into the arms of the
men who awaited me. How you came to be there, Mr. Blake, or why you did
not open the gate and follow, I cannot say.”
“The gate was locked,” returned that gentleman. “You remember it closes
with a spring, and can only be opened by means of a key which I did not
have.”
“My father had it,” she murmured; “he spent a whole week in the endeavor
to get hold of it, and finally succeeded on the evening of the very day
he used it. It was left in the lock I believe.”
“So much for servants,” I whispered to myself.
“The next morning,” continued she, “they put the case very plainly
before me. I was at liberty to return at once to my home if I would
promise to work in their interest by making certain demands upon you as
your wife. All they wanted, said they, was a snug little sum and a lift
out of the country. If I would secure them these, they would trouble me
no more. But I could not concede to anything of that nature, of course,
and the consequence was these long weeks of imprisonment and suspense;
weeks that I do not now begrudge, seeing they have brought me the
assurance of your esteem and the knowledge, that wherever I go, your
thoughts will follow me with compassion if not with love.”
And having told her story and thus answered his demands, she assumed
once more the position of lofty reserve that seemed to shut him back
from advance like a wall of invincible crystal.