The sinister mark
to anchor me."
"And your photograph studio, Mr. Lord. I should think you'd have hated
to leave that," said Peter, at last boldly approaching the subject
deepest in his thoughts. "By the way, speaking of photography"--he
smiled and leaned forward across the table, confidentially--"you may be
surprised, but I've seen some of your work. It's bully, too!"
"What?" cried Walter Lord, excitedly. "You don't say so, Mr. Clancy.
Some of my work in New York! Now I wonder who it could have been.
I've only taken pictures of people around here--and there aren't so
many--it's never been what you could call a paying profession, and
Miranda----But never mind. Whose picture was it that you saw? And how
did you know that I----"
"By George, I believe I've got it with me," said Peter, slapping his
pockets, the while his heart beat quickly. Now or never--"Here it is,
sure enough," he added, gleefully--and laid the small carte-de-visite,
the sole trophy of his midnight quest, face upward on the table.
There was a moment of suspense while the old man carefully adjusted his
glasses and took the old photograph up in his hand. Peter watched his
face, narrowly. It had been many years. Would he----
"Why! Why!" exclaimed Walter Lord, in tones of deep surprise. "Why,
how, in Heaven's name, Mr. Clancy, did you get a picture of--of little
Rosamond Curwood?"
CHAPTER XVII
ANOTHER PHOTOGRAPH
"Rosamond Curwood!" Peter's heart skipped a beat and then raced on
again. Could he have been mistaken? But no! He had found the picture
in her apartment, and it could be no other than Mary Blake. He was
sure, positive.... And Curwood? With a click, his mind fastened the
connection. The name he had written in his notebook--the name in the
old set of Shakespeare--Curwood. Winthrop Curwood!
Though he had been staggered for an instant, Peter resumed the
conversation with scarcely a perceptible pause:
"It's Winthrop Curwood's daughter, isn't it?" he said, smoothly,
watching closely the old man's expression.
There was immediate and unqualified acquiescence in the eyes of Walter
Lord. "Yes. But where did you get it?" he asked again, wonderingly. "I
thought----"
"Yes?" Peter encouraged, as the old man hesitated.
"It seems odd to me that you should have her picture."
There was a slight emphasis on the last pronoun, and for the first
time Walter Lord looked at Peter with almost a hint of--was it
suspicion?--in his eyes.
"I just ran across it in an old desk," Peter hastened to explain, "and
I kept it because it's such a pretty kid, and the photograph so well
taken. Looks as if she was just going to speak--and you can almost hear
her laugh. I don't know the original----"
"But you knew who it was." Lord's tone was puzzled.
"Yes. I knew who it was," said Peter, easily. "Beautiful little thing,
isn't she? It was a fine subject for you, and I must say you've done it
justice."
Peter had struck a very vulnerable spot. Walter Lord's faint feeling
of suspicion, if so strong a term may be used, melted away before the
frank praise of his work.
"Not bad, not bad at all," he said, smiling now, "and, as you say, she
was a beautiful child. The most beautiful child I ever saw," dreamily,
"except her mother--Anne Blakeslie."
"Anne Blakeslie--Anne Blake----" Peter repeated to himself,
thoughtfully. Aloud he said:
"So you knew her mother, too? Isn't it strange how things come about?
The world is a little place, after all."
The banality of this last remark did not strike Walter Lord. Instead,
he seemed to think it quite an effective sentence.
"The world is small, Mr. Clancy. Yes, the world is a little
place, after all," he agreed. "Here you drop into Hobart Falls so
unexpectedly, and come to my house, which you couldn't possibly have
heard about--and all the while you have a picture of one of Anne
Blakeslie's children in your pocket."
His innocent wonder made Peter feel almost ashamed. But the matter was
too important for squeamishness, he assured himself. That last remark--
"So there was more than one child," said Peter, quickly. "Were they all
as beautiful as this--this Rosamond?"
"There were only two," answered Lord, reminiscently. "Two twin girls.
The other was named for her mother."
"Anne?"
"Yes. Anne and Rosamond," said the old man, gently.
"Did you know them well?" asked Peter, and added--"It's such a funny
coincidence, altogether. Makes me sort of curious about them."
Walter Lord leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and gazed out at
the red gold of the summer sunset.
"Yes," he said, softly. "Yes, I knew them well. That is, I knew the
children--and their mother--I knew her best of all----"
There was something in Walter Lord's quaint old face which kept Peter
silent. He could not interrupt with the questions which were burning
to be asked. He would let the story come in its own way.... After a
moment the old man went on:
"Yes," with a little sigh, "I knew Anne Blakeslie--you might say I'd
always known her. She lived on a farm, up back in the hills, and we
both went to the little brick school house down at the end of the
village. Guess you didn't see it. It's just around the turn of the
road."
"No," said Peter, softly, so as not to break the thread of the old
man's thought.
"Yes--we saw each other every day--until I went away to school--and
when Tom died, and I had to come home to stay--Anne Blakeslie had grown
up in the meantime, and she was beautiful--beautiful in soul as well as
in body--or, perhaps, it wouldn't have happened----"
A purple cloud drifted across the setting sun. Its shadow fell softly
upon the old face.
"What was it that happened?" prompted the younger man, gently.
"Why," Walter Lord roused himself with an effort, "it was about that
time she must have come to know Winthrop Curwood. It's sort of an odd
story. Maybe you'd like to hear----"
"I would." Peter's answer should have left no room for doubt.
He was conscious, as the old man proceeded with the story, that it was
the drama of Walter Lord's life. Sometimes he forgot Peter altogether;
at other times he was aware of the younger man only as a ship that
passes in the night. He spoke to him in passing. It did not matter
how much he told. They would never see each other again, in all human
probability. As one sometimes may tell a stranger the thoughts of an
over-burdened heart, thoughts which would for ever remain hidden from
the nearest and dearest, so Walter Lord told Peter, without himself
realizing it, the story of his life's tragedy--the story of Anne
Blakeslie.
"I never knew when she saw Winthrop Curwood first. Not that it
matters." The old voice was low and gentle. Throughout the pronoun
"she" was spoken with such reverence as to suggest that it would have
been written with a capital--as if, instead of Anne Blakeslie, a deity
were its antecedent--"She must have known him pretty well when I saw
them together for the first time.... I was going up to her house one
day, soon after I got back from school, and.... They were standing just
where a little wood road from up the mountain comes in to the sawmill
road, about two miles west of the village.... They didn't see me,
though I was in plain sight, a hundred yards away.... He was standing
with his hat off--and a look on his face.... It was a fine face,
too.... And just then he reached out, sort of uncertainly, and took her
hand.... I thought I'd better go home, and come back to see Anne some
other day--perhaps. But she caught sight of me before I'd gone more
than a few steps, and called to me. I went back, of course--and I saw
him again, climbing up the steep road, it was hardly more than a trail,
and feeling ahead of him with a long stick. It was then I saw, from the
way he moved, that he was blind----"
"Blind!" echoed Peter, aghast! "Blind."
"Yes," said the old man, sadly. "He was stone blind. Anne told me about
him, at once, with tears standing in her eyes. He had a little house
over on the far side of the mountain, and lived there all alone. He
had come there, she said, while he could still see a little, and built
the place with some help from a man down in Job's Corners, who still
brought up his supplies. Nobody knew anything about him except it was
easy to see, she said, that he was a gentleman, and educated. And
indeed he was. I saw him, myself, several times after they--after they
were married."
He paused on that word, and the golden sun, freeing itself from the
passing cloud, lit up the kind old face, with its pitiful, dyed hair,
the quaintly youthful garments, and made of them a thing touching,
tender, wistful in its appeal. He went on, almost immediately:
"He was a wonderful-looking man, tall and straight; and his voice--I
don't know how to describe it. It was clear and deep, like the sound
of a big bell.... But I don't think it was any of these things that
most appealed to Anne Blakeslie. It was his helplessness, his pitiful
blindness. She talked to me about it quite often that fall. I knew
by that time that there was no hope--I mean that I knew, by then,
that she loved this stranger, and she said I was the only person she
could talk freely to. Her father was a hard man, and she the only
child.... She told me, at last, that she was going to marry Winthrop
Curwood whether he wanted her to or not. She was high-spirited in
those days--headstrong, you might call it--and, when she'd made up her
mind definitely that Curwood should not live alone, she----You may
not understand this part of the story, Mr. Clancy. Her father didn't,
and cut her off completely--refused to see her, and left the farm
and everything he had to a distant cousin, who lives there to-day--a
selfish wretch!" For the first time there was bitterness in the old
man's tone. Peter said, with quiet sympathy:
"I'll understand, you may be sure of that. Tell me what happened."
"Well, one night, just at dusk, Anne Blakeslie climbed this side of the
mountain for the last time. She took some clothing with her, and a few
other things.... She didn't tell me much, but I can imagine--knowing
her.... She went in, quietly, and told him she had come to stay. He--he
protested. He pointed out the sacrifice she was making. She overruled
all his objections--as Anne Blakeslie would know how to do--and
then----"
The room was growing dark. A big white moth flew in through the open
window and fluttered softly among the lilies.
"The next morning they went together down the far side of the mountain,
and were married by Father O'Connell.... Anne sent me a letter and I
went to see them. I was the only one, of all the people hereabouts,
and I went only when Anne sent for me, which wasn't often. Somehow,
Curwood, in his quiet, dignified way, made me feel--well, anyway, I
never went except when Anne needed me. But in those few times it seemed
to me that they were managing very well. They seemed quite comfortable
as long as Curwood lived.... He was an Englishman, I think. At least,
he spoke differently from us. I'm quite sure he must have been English,
though Anne never told me anything about him. He did not wish it, was
all she said. If she was satisfied, it was enough for me.
"I found out, later, when he died, that he had only--what they call an
annuity, which ended with his life. Anne had known it all along and had
saved what she could, which wasn't a great deal. The two little girls
were growing up, and it took something to care for them. They came
down here to the little old brick school house every day for several
winters, and I used to see them often."
Though he did not say so, Peter knew full well that Walter Lord had
taken pains to keep an eye on the children of Anne Blakeslie.