A Strange Disappearance (20 page)

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

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

"Executed under my eye," observed Mrs. Daniels.

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

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

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

The paper in Mr. Blake's hand fluttered.

"You are aware what those wishes are?" said he.

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * * *

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

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

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