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.
"They were interesting children, very interesting. All children and young people are, of course; but these two were more so than any I ever came in contact with. Rosamond was beautiful beyond anything I, or anybody, ever saw, I think. I used to delight in taking pictures of her. I could show you a dozen up in the gallery. And she was always more than glad to sit for me. She knew pretty well how she looked. Didn't need any one to tell her, and who could blame anything so lovely as that for knowing it was lovely? Might as well blame a water-lily that looks at itself all day in a pond.... But Anne, poor little Anne—she was always my favourite."
Peter glanced up in surprise. That Anne Blake should have appealed, even as a child, to any one, least of all to this gentle, sweet old chap, was a decidedly new thought to him. Perhaps it was just because he was so gentle, Peter reminded himself, and because she was the daughter of Anne Blakeslie——Walter Lord went on, with a little laugh—
"She was always an odd little thing. I remember one time when Anne sent for me—her father was very ill; she had heard of it, and wanted me to take him a message. Well, I went up there, and little Anne, who must have been about five years old, happened to meet me, just at the edge of the woods, near the house. She was shy, and started to run, but I called her and told her my name and gave her some candy, one of those long peppermint sticks we used to like. She took it and thanked me very prettily, and then she ran on ahead, and I heard her say to her mother, in such a funny little awed tone, 'Mother! Mr. God's coming to see you.'"
Peter laughed and the old man chuckled softly.
"She certainly was an odd little thing—Anne. She was shy, naturally, and was not as fond of coming up into the gallery as her sister was, because she was afraid that I would want to take her picture, a thing she absolutely refused to let me do. I did entice her into the gallery sometimes, with books and candy, and some of the other little things that children love. I had an idea that it might be nice to get a photograph of her for her mother. I had plenty of Rosamond, but had never been able to overcome Anne's prejudice against sitting for me."
"What a funny idea for a kid to have," said Peter, thoughtfully. "I know some boys would almost as soon go to a dentist as to a photographer, but I never knew a girl, of any age, who didn't love it."
"Well," said Walter Lord, slowly, "Anne had her reason, poor little thing. She was high-strung, and sensitive almost to the point of obsession about——But there"—he broke off—"she might have trusted me. I'd never have put the poor child—Anne Blakeslie's child—to shame.... And I finally got what I was after." Even though many years had passed, there was a little triumph in his voice at the recollection. "I got her to playing with a doll in the sitter's chair, and I caught her one day in just the position I wanted. Would you like to see? I know just where——"
"I certainly would," said Peter.
Walter Lord jumped quickly up from his chair, threw the end of a cigarette out of the window, and disappeared up a small back stairway which led directly from the room. Peter heard him walking about overhead for a moment. Presently he reappeared, with something in his hand.
He laid it down, and lighted a lamp on the table, for the room was now almost dark.
"There she is," he said, leaning over Peter's shoulder, and pointing to the little old photograph. "And, whatever chance has happened to her, I'll wager that's the only photograph in existence of Anne Curwood."