A Strange Disappearance

  CHAPTER XVIII. LOVE AND DUTY

  Dismissing the men who had assisted us in the capture of these two hardyvillains, we ranged our prisoners before us.

  "Now," said Mr. Gryce, "no fuss and no swearing; you are in for it, andyou might as well take it quietly as any other way."

  "Give me a clutch on that girl, that's all," said her father, "Where isshe? Let me see her; every father has a right to see his own daughter,"

  "You shall see her," returned my superior, "but not till her husband ishere to protect her."

  "Her husband? ah, you know about that do you?" growled the heavy voiceof the son. "A rich man they say he is and a proud one. Let him comeand look at us lying here like dogs and say how he will enjoy having hiswife's father and brother grinding away their lives in prison."

  "Mr. Blake is coming," quoth Mr. Gryce, who by some preconcerted signalfrom the window had drawn that gentleman across the street. "He willtell you himself that he considers prison the best place for you. Blastyou! but he--"

  "But he, what?" inquired I, as the door opened and Mr. Blake with a paleface and agitated mien entered the room.

  The wretch did not answer. Rousing from the cowering position in whichthey had both lain since their capture, the father and son struggledup in some sort of measure to their feet, and with hot, anxious eyessurveyed the countenance of the gentleman before them, as if they felttheir fate hung upon the expression of his pallid face. The son was thefirst to speak.

  "How do you do, brother-in-law," were his sullen and insulting words.

  Mr. Blake shuddered and cast a look around.

  "My wife?" murmured he.

  "She is well," was the assurance given by Mr. Gryce, "and in a room notfar 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 wretchesfirst, and understand if I can what my wife has to suffer from herconnection with them."

  "Your wife," broke in the father, "what's that to do with it; thequestion is how do you like it and what will you do to get us clear ofthis thing."

  "I will do nothing," returned Mr. Blake. "You amply merit your doom andyou shall suffer it to the end for all time."

  "It will read well in the papers," exclaimed the son.

  "The papers are to know nothing about it," I broke in. "All knowledgeof your connection with Mr. or Mrs. Blake is to be buried in this spotbefore we or you leave it. Not a word of her or him is to cross the lipsof either of you from this hour. I have set that down as a condition andit has got to be kept."

  "You have, have you," thundered in chorus from father and son. "And whoare you to make conditions, and what do you think we are that you expectus to keep them? Can you do anymore than put us back from where we camefrom?"

  For reply I took from my pocket the ring I had fished out of the ashesof their kitchen stove on that memorable visit to their house, andholding it up before their faces, looked them steadily in the eye.

  A sudden wild glare followed by a bluish palor that robbed theircountenances of their usual semblance of daring ferocity, answered mebeyond 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 Ichoose to use it against you. The pedlar--"

  "Hush," exclaimed the father in a low choked tone greatly in contrast toany he had yet used in all our dealings with him. "Throw that ring outof the window and I promise to hold my tongue about any matter you don'twant spoke of. I'm not a fool--"

  "Nor I," was my quick reply, as I restored the ring to my pocket. "Whilethat remains in my possession together with certain facts concerningyour habits in that old house of yours which have lately been made knownto me, your life hangs by a thread I can any minute snip in two. Mr.Blake here, has spent some portion of a night in your house and knowshow near it lies to a certain precipice, at foot of which--"

  "Mein Gott, father, why don't you say something!" leaped in cowedaccents from the son's white lips. "If they want us to keep quiet, letthem say so and not go talking about things that--"

  "Now look here," interposed Mr. Gryce stepping before them with a lookthat closed their mouths at once. "I will just tell you what we proposeto do. You are to go back to prison and serve your time out, there isno help for that, but as long as you behave yourselves and continueabsolutely silent regarding your relationship to the wife of thisgentleman, 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 withwhatever interest it may have accumulated. You are ready to promisethat, are you not?" he inquired turning to Mr. Blake.

  That gentleman bowed and named the sum, which was liberal enough, andthe bank.

  "But," continued the detective, ignoring the sudden flash of eye thatpassed between the father and son, "let me or any of us hear of a wordhaving been uttered by you, which in the remotest way shall suggest thatyou have in the world such a connection as Mrs. Blake, and the money notonly stops going into the bank, but old scores shall be raked up againstyou with a zeal which if it does not stop your mouth in one way, will inanother, and that with a suddenness you will not altogether relish."

  The men with a dogged air from which the bravado had however fled,turned and looked from one to the other of us in a fearful, inquiringway that duly confessed to the force of the impression made by thesewords upon their slow but not unimaginative minds.

  "Do you three promise to keep our secret if we keep yours?" muttered thefather with an uneasy glance at my pocket.

  "We certainly do," was our solemn return.

  "Very well; call in the girl and let me just look at her, then, beforewe 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 shudder to thewindow. "I--I wish it," added he.

  Straightway with hasty foot I left the room. Going to the little closetwhere 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 buriedin her hands, and her whole person breathing that agony of suspense thatis a torture to the sensitive soul.

  "Mrs. Blake," said I, dismissing the landlady who stood in helplessdistress beside her, "the arrest has been satisfactorily made and yourfather calls for you to say good-bye before going away with us. Will youcome?"

  "But my--my--Mr. Blake?" exclaimed she leaping to her feet. "I am sure Iheard his footstep in the hall?"

  "He is with your father and brother. It was at his command I came foryou."

  A gleam hard to interpret flashed for an instant over her face. Withher eye on the door she towered in her womanly dignity, while thoughtsinnumerable 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 drew back; a step was in the hall, on thethreshold, 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 concentratedanguish of many a month of longing and despair, but there was noinvitation in its sound, and he who had held out his arms, stopped andsurveying her with a certain deprecatory glance in his proud eye, said,

  "You are right; I have first my acknowledgments to make and yourforgiveness to ask before I can hope--"

  "No, no," she broke in, "your coming here is enough, I request no more.If you felt unkindly toward me--"

  "Unkindly?" A world of love thrilled in that word. "Luttra, I am yourhusband and rejoice that I am so; it is to lay the devotion of my heartand life at your feet that I seek your presence this hour. The year hastaught me--ah, what has not the year taught me of the worth of her I sorecklessly threw from me on my wedding day. Luttra,"--he held out hishand--"will you crown all your other acts of devotion with a pardonthat will restore me to my manhood
and that place in your esteem which Icovet above every other earthly good?"

  Her face which had been raised to his with that earnest look we knew sowell, softened with an ineffable smile, but still she did not lay herhand in his.

  "And you say this to me in the very hour of my father's and brother'sarrest! With the remembrance in your mind of their bound and abjectforms lying before you guarded by police; knowing too, that they deservetheir ignominy and the long imprisonment that awaits them?"

  "No, I say it on the day of the discovery and the restoration of thatwife for whom I have long searched, and to whom when found I have noword to give but welcome, welcome, welcome."

  With the same deep smile she bowed her head, "Now let come what will,I can never again be unhappy," were the words I caught, uttered in thelowest of undertones. But in another moment her head had regained itssteady poise and a great change had passed over her manner.

  "Mr. Blake," said she, "you are good; how good, I alone can know andduly appreciate who have lived in your house this last year and seenwith eyes that missed nothing, just what your surroundings are and havebeen from the earliest years of your proud life. But goodness must notlead you into the committal of an act you must and will repent to yourdying day; or if it does, I who have learned my duty in the school ofadversity, must show the courage of two and forbid what every secretinstinct 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 thatmeans?"

  "I think I do," was his earnest reply. "Relief from heart-ache, Luttra."

  Her smooth brow wrinkled with a sudden spasm of pain but her firm lipsdid not quiver.

  "It means," said she, drawing nearer but not with that approach whichindicates yielding, "it means, shame to the proudest family that livesin the land. It means silence as regards a past blotted by suggestionsof crime; and apprehension concerning a future across which the shadowof prison walls must for so many years lie. It means, the hushing ofcertain words upon beloved lips; the turning of cherished eyes fromvisions where fathers and daughters ay, brothers and sisters areseen joined together in tender companionship or loving embrace. Itmeans,--God help me to speak out--a home without the sanctity ofmemories; a husband without the honors he has been accustomed to enjoy;a wife with a fear gnawing like a serpent into her breast; and children,yes, perhaps children from whose innocent lips the sacred word ofgrandfather can never fall without wakening a blush on the cheeks oftheir parents, which all their lovesome prattle will be helpless tochase away."

  "Luttra, your father and your brother have given their consent to gotheir dark way alone and trouble you no more. The shadow you speak ofmay lie on your heart, dear wife, for these men are of your own blood,but it need never invade the hearthstone beside which I ask you to sit.The world will never know, whether you come with me or not, thatLuttra Blake was ever Luttra Schoenmaker. Will you not then give me thehappiness 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 sotruly?"

  "O do not," she began but paused with a sudden control of her emotionthat lifted her into an atmosphere almost holy in its significance. "Mr.Blake," said she, "I am a woman and therefore weak to the voice of lovepleading in my ear. But in one thing I am strong, and that is in mysense of what is due to the man I have sworn to honor. Eleven months agoI left you because your pleasure and my own dignity demanded it; to-dayI put by all the joy and exaltation you offer, because your position asa gentleman, and your happiness as a man equally requires it."

  "My happiness as a man!" he broke in. "Ah, Luttra if you love me as I doyou--"

  "I might perhaps yield," she allowed with a faint smile. "But I loveyou as a girl brought up amid surroundings from which her whole beingrecoiled, must love the one who first brought light into her darknessand opened up to her longing feet the way to a life of culture, purityand honor. I were the basest of women could I consent to repay such aboundless favor--"

  "But Luttra," he again broke in, "you married me knowing what yourfather and brother were capable of committing."

  "Yes, yes; I was blinded by passion, a girl's passion, Mr. Blake, bornof glamour and gratitude; not the self-forgetting devotion of a womanwho has tasted the bitterness of life and so learned its lesson ofsacrifice. I may not have thought, certainly I did not realize, what Iwas doing. Besides, my father and brother were not convicted criminalsat 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; thatwe 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 her husband. "They are as dead to you as if the gravehad 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'ssun is not dearer to my eyes; but I will never cross your threshold asyour wife till the opprobrium can be cut loose from my skirts, and theshadow uplifted from my brow. A queen with high thoughts in her eyes andbrave 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 crimeand despair, that these rooms have often seemed to me the gateway tohell, carry there, even in secrecy, the effects of that atmosphere? Iwill cherish your goodness in my heart but do not ask me to bury thatheart in any more exalted spot, than some humble country home, wheremy life may be spent in good deeds and my love in prayers for the man Ihold dear, and because I hold dear, leave to his own high path among thestraight and unshadowed courses of the world."

  And with a gesture that inexorably shut him off while it expressed themost touching appeal, she glided by him and took her way to the roomwhere her father and brother awaited her presence.