CHAPTER XIX
In the Old Photograph Gallery
When Peter awoke very early the next morning, though the problem was still the same, the form of his inner question had slightly changed.
"How much need I tell Morris?" he asked himself. "If Mary Blake never is found, why dig up the sad old sordid story? It must have happened ten years ago—and perhaps she'd redeemed herself—who can tell? And it's a thankless job, chucking stones is, Pete.... If what O'Malley and I doped out turns out to be true, and Anne, in spite of the virtues old Lord attributes to her.... If Anne, for the sake of her clever sister's money—or from jealousy of her perfect beauty——H'm'm'm."
He broke off here to wonder how the sisters came together afterward. Lord evidently knew nothing about it. So far as Peter could learn he was quite unaware that they had ever met again.
After recovering from the shock of Lord's disclosure in regard to Rosamond, Peter had, carefully and skilfully, questioned him. The talk lasted far into the night, but all he had found out was this:
Upon Rosamond's disappearance from Hobart Falls, Anne had retired, absolutely, within herself. All that winter she lived alone in the small house on the other side of the mountain and never came at all to the village. Lord had gone up to see her many times, and at last she confided to him that she had almost no money at all.
He didn't say it in so many words, but Peter gathered that the generous, kind old man had offered to share what little he had with her and had been refused.
"When summer came," he told Peter, "without saying anything to me, she went over and got work from the rich city people in Fennimore Park."
Peter understood that the old man was very angry when he found it out, but that it had had no effect on Anne's unyielding spirit. She continued to take washing and to do day's work for the summer people. There was nothing else to be done. She was too proud to take money she had not earned, and this seemed to be the only way in which she could make a livelihood.
And then, one day late in the fall, Lord had received a letter from her saying that she was going away as a sort of maid or companion to an old lady, a Mrs. Rutherford, who had a cottage in Fennimore Park. She told him that she hoped, before very long, to be able to send the money he had loaned her on her father's watch and an old seal ring. (Lord had been worried for fear Mr. Clancy might think he had exacted this security. Peter assured him that he readily understood that it must have been forced upon him.)
"And did she send for them?" Peter had asked with interest.
It transpired that she had and that Lord had returned the watch and ring in Mrs. Rutherford's care, to the Holland House in New York.
And that was the last he had ever heard of Anne Curwood. He had made a pilgrimage to Fennimore Park the next summer, only to find that Mrs. Rutherford had gone abroad and that no one knew anything about Anne. The following year he succeeded in seeing Mrs. Rutherford, who was obviously, from Lord's tone, an awe-inspiring lady. She had dimly remembered that she had once had a maid named Anne Curwood, but the young woman was no longer in her employ and she could, unfortunately, give Mr. Lord no address.
Peter was going over all this in his mind as he bathed and dressed. He was in a somewhat despondent mood for one of his sanguine temperament, and rather wished he had not humoured Walter Lord's absurd request that he should sit for his photograph before he left in the morning. To be sure, he had refused once, on the ground that his train left at nine-thirty, but when he saw how disappointed Lord was not to have this souvenir of what was, evidently, an event in the old man's life, he hastily relented, and as a result, he was up and dressed at seven o'clock.
He had heard his host pottering about the kitchen before he was up, and when he presently descended the old carpeted front stair, he found an ample and savoury breakfast awaiting him. It was rapidly, and by Walter Lord gleefully, dispatched.
"The light is great this morning," the old enthusiast said, as he led the way up the back stairs, "and I'm going to make a fine picture of you, Mr. Clancy. It's awfully good of you to be willing to humour an old codger like me. I hope you won't mind the gallery being a bit dusty," he added, opening a gray painted door. "I don't have much incentive, these days, to keep it spick and span, and I never have allowed Miranda to tidy up here since the day she carefully dusted six wet negatives." He laughed over his shoulder as he went into a closet for his plate holders.
Peter, left to his own devices for a moment, wandered about the room. It was an ordinary country photograph gallery, with the usual top and side lights, platform, screens, and chairs. The only odd thing about it was that the walls, from a chair rail at the bottom to well above the eye line, were completely covered with photographs. It was a big room, and there was not one inch of space wasted. It must have been the enthusiastic work of a lifetime, and Walter Lord was, obviously, a good workman for even the portraits which, judging by the costumes, dated far back, were not badly faded.
"This is some collection you've got here," said Peter, admiringly, as Lord came back into the room. "Wish I had time to look it all over."
Lord laid his plates down on a table near by, and smiling at the compliment, motioned Peter to a chair on the platform. Then he ducked under the black cloth of the camera, talking all the while:
"Yes, I've done a fairish amount of work in my time, Mr. Clancy, though a lot of it was gratis, as you may imagine. (A little more to the left, please.) I haven't made a lot of money, but I've had a splendid time. (Chin up, just a little. Not quite so much—there, that's fine. Couldn't be better.) I'll show you some things you may be interested in, in just a moment. Now, don't move, please."
He slipped out from under the black cloth, caught up and adjusted the plate holder with expert hands, and then stood beside the camera, with the bulb ready.
"Now imagine that you've just caught a two-pound trout, Mr. Clancy! That's what I want! That's fine, fine! Oh, that's going to be splendid, Mr. Clancy," he said, gleefully, as he manipulated the plates. "Now just once more to make sure. A little to the right—there—and another fish!"
Peter laughed aloud. The shutter clicked. The old man was delighted.
"I caught that laugh of yours, Mr. Clancy, and that was just what I wanted—to remember you by. It's good to be young, and to laugh. I don't believe you have a care in the world!"
Peter laughed inwardly, sardonically, at this. And all the while he was thinking of Donald Morris. How much need he be told?
"Come over here, and I'll show you something pretty, Mr. Clancy." Walter Lord, having disposed of his precious plates, was again at Peter's side. "I think this is one of the most charming pictures I've ever made. See if you recognize it."
He led the way to a corner of the room where some of the photographs were turning a little brown; evidently they had been placed there years ago. He pointed to a cabinet-size picture half way up the wall. Peter looked and saw, dressed in a fanciful costume of fluttering gauze, a delicate, slender child's figure standing, fairy-like, beside the trunk of a great beech. The flicker of sun and leaf shadows was all about her, and her little oval face was alight with joy and mischief. The beauty of it caught Peter's breath.
"Why, it's Mar—Rosamond Curwood, isn't it?" he exclaimed. "And, by George, I'll say you're some artist, Mr. Lord!"
"It is lovely, isn't it?" said the old man, happily. "I remember how I enjoyed taking it. Not many regular photographers were doing outdoor backgrounds at that time, but I had nothing here"—he glanced scornfully at the stiffly painted old screens—"nothing that was suitable. And I did want to keep a memory of the way the child looked in that fairy dress. I saw her at the school in a little play, and persuaded her—not that there was any trouble about that—to sit for me. It was a curious thing how well Rosamond acted in all the little entertainments they gave at the school.... At the same time, I don't think she was half so clever, in that way, as Anne, but of course Anne was so shy that she would never appear in public, and I imagine almost no one knew that she had any talent. I only found it out, myself, by accident."
Peter saw in this the old man's habitual defence of his favourite, a natural siding with "the underdog." To humour this kindly quality, he asked:
"How was that?"
"Why," said Walter Lord, reminiscently, "it started one day when I was going up to their house through the woods. I was walking along quietly, and suddenly I thought I heard someone talking, half singing, a little way to the left, behind a screen of young hemlock. The words, such as I could catch, sounded strangely familiar. My curiosity got the better of me, and I slipped quietly through the bushes and parted the hemlock sprays. There, in a tiny open glade, was little Anne, dancing lightly in the sunshine and half singing:
"You know, Mr. Clancy—the last part of 'Midsummer Night's Dream'."
Peter was not any too familiar with Shakespeare, but he nodded in silent acquiescence, and the old man went on:
"I found out, after that, that she knew simply miles of Shakespeare. She used to recite for me, under strict pledge of secrecy, in the woods, on long, summer afternoons. You should have heard her, as little Arthur, in 'King John,' plead for her eyes—'O, spare mine eyes, if for no use, but still to look on thee!' Her voice was enough to break a body's heart.... But, of course, she had no chance, poor child, with that dreadful mark on her face."
"Was it such a terrible disfigurement?" asked Peter, eager to get an accurate description. "Where was it and how large?"
"It was just here"—Walter Lord placed his curved palm upon his lower jaw, with the fingers extending up on the cheek. "It was almost like the mark of a hand, a bloody hand——" The old man frowned and sadly shook his head. "Too bad, too bad. Wrecked the poor child's life ... seems terrible ... such a little thing—but, for a girl——"
"Yes, too bad, too bad," echoed Peter, absently, the while he made a mental note of the probable shape and position of the identifying mark by which he hoped at last to recognize Anne Blake. "Well," he added, rousing himself and looking at his watch, "I'm afraid I ought to be going, Mr. Lord. How long will it take to get to the station?"
"Oh, not more than ten minutes," answered the old man, dragging out his own watch and comparing it with Peter's. "You've twenty minutes to spare. I want to write down your address so I can send you prints of the pictures I took of you just now. I'm pretty sure you'll like 'em."
He went over and began fumbling in his desk for something to write upon. Peter followed and stood beside him.
"Forty-seven East Thirty —— Street." Peter supplied his private address, and as Lord seemed to be having some trouble in finding what he sought, Peter waited, glancing absently about.
Suddenly his eye was arrested by a picture on the wall—a man and a girl on horseback. Could he be mistaken? He stepped nearer. No, he was right. He had never seen the girl before, but the man, the man on the left of the photograph, was Donald Morris. There could be no possible doubt. But what was he doing here? How had it happened——
Suppressing an ejaculation, Peter turned to the old photographer. Making his voice perfectly casual, he asked:
"Who's the good-looking chap on horseback over here?"
Lord looked up, following Peter's pointing finger.
"Oh, that?" he said. "I don't know the man's name. The lady is a Miss Stone—lives over at Fennimore Park. She's quite a friend of mine. Rides through here two or three times a season, and is always having her picture taken with some man or other. You'll find several of 'em along there.... Now, where the dickens? Oh, here it is." He pulled, from a crowded pigeonhole, a small, dusty, black leather notebook, dragging a mass of letters and papers out with it. "Now, Mr. Clancy, give me the address again, if you don't mind——"
Peter, his mind full of conjectures, leaned over the old man as he sat at his desk, and absently repeated his address: "Forty-seven East Thirty —— Street, New York City." And as he did so, his eye lighted upon one of the letters which had fallen to the floor.
Automatically, he stooped to pick it up, and as he lifted it, inadvertently he caught the words:
"... money order, and if you will return my father's ring, which I value, and the——"
Peter's heart almost stopped beating as he looked at the writing. His brain was in a whirl. He must leave immediately, and he had no time to weigh problems of right and wrong. He only knew one thing. He must have this letter of Anne Curwood's—of Anne Blake's. He must have time to consider.
The old man's head was bent above his notebook. With a swift motion Peter, feeling like an unmitigated hound, slipped the letter into his pocket. "I'll make up some story—I'll return it later," he thought, confusedly. "In the meantime——"
"I'm afraid I've got to hustle to make the train, Mr. Lord," he said, aloud, grasping the old man's hand. "You've been awfully good to me, and I do appreciate it, though I may not show it much. I'll write to you, and I hope you won't forget me. Don't come down. I'll just grab my bag and beat it. Thank you a thousand times for your hospitality, and if you ever come to New York, don't forget that you have my address. Good-bye. Good-bye"—and in the midst of Walter Lord's hearty farewells and invitations to come again, he was gone.