CHAPTER XVIII

ROSAMOND'S SECRET

Peter took the yellowed card in his hands and looked at it long and eagerly. For nearly a month past he would have been ready to pay almost any price for a portrait of Anne Blake, and now, here in his hand, he held the thing he had been wishing for--and, for his purpose, it might as well have been a piece of blank pasteboard--or so he thought at the moment.

The child face of Anne Curwood was shown in profile, facing the left. The tell-tale mark, which had probably changed but little in the succeeding years, the birthmark by which Peter hoped to identify her without shadow of doubt, appeared not at all. This was the way in which Walter Lord had shielded a child's sensitiveness. He had, with careful purpose, selected a view which showed the little face unmarred.

That there was a hidden disfigurement Peter had no reasonable doubt, both because of what Lord had already said and because of his own previous knowledge, but he must make sure. He must force Lord to tell him.

"Why, she's a beautiful little kid," Peter said, abruptly. "I thought, from what you said, she must be as ugly as the dickens. Why in the world was she so funny about letting you----"

"Poor little thing! It wasn't funny," said the old man, compassionately. "If either you or I had the same reason, we'd have felt the same way."

"But I don't see----" Peter began.

"No, you don't," said Lord, quickly. "I took very good pains that no one should see it."

"See--what?" persisted Peter.

"Why," said the old man, hesitatingly, "the little thing was born with a dreadful mark on the other side of her face, the right side."

("I knew it was the right side," thought Peter, swiftly. "That would have been the side in shadow, when the cabman saw Anne Blake standing before her sister's dressing table. I told O'Malley it must be the right side." He was thinking this even while he listened attentively.)

"That's why I took her in profile," Lord was saying--"so it wouldn't show, you see. The child was painfully sensitive about it and so was her mother, though of course not to the same extent. I wanted them both to be pleased, and I knew Anne Blakeslie must hate to be reminded of--of----Oh, Mr. Clancy, such a horrible experience.... I hate, even now, to think of it."

Peter did not say, "Don't think of it, then." He wanted to hear, to learn every detail. He did not want to miss even a remote chance. So he looked eagerly, inquiringly, into the old man's face, but said nothing.

"It was awful, terrible," Walter Lord went on as Peter knew he must now that he was fully started. "It wasn't so very long before Anne and Rosamond were born. She was--she had gone into the woods to pick blackberries or something I think.... There was a sort of clearing behind some big rocks not so very far from the house.... And there--I learned it all much later--she came upon a vicious, half-witted tramp, who was harbouring up on the mountain. He was squatting on the ground, dressing a chicken he'd stolen, and she didn't see him until she was right beside him.... He looked at her--and leaped up. She was a woman, beautiful--alone, and, as he thought, far from help. He bent over, and crept toward her, with his hands all bloody.... She screamed--and--and he caught her by the throat----"

The old man lifted his clenched hands and pressed them, quivering, against his forehead. Peter sat in horrified silence.

"If she hadn't screamed"--Walter Lord went on, after a moment--"if she hadn't been able to fight, and keep on screaming--God"----Again he paused, but after a long, shuddering breath, continued--"Curwood was inside the house, but he heard her. He had almost a sixth sense of direction, and all his senses were preternaturally acute, but he was blind! Think of it! To be blind, and to hear someone--someone you loved--calling--calling for help!

"He got there--just in time. The fiend heard him coming and made off through the woods.... Anne was ill, terribly ill, and for a long time it seemed as if she could not live. It was a fearful time for--for everyone who cared for her.

"A few days before her little twin babies were born, the body of the--of the wretch was found at the bottom of a cliff. There were black marks of fingers on his throat--but he was known to be a worthless scoundrel--and the coroner's jury brought in a verdict of accidental death."

There was a long silence, broken only by the call of an owl away off in the woods--"Who-o-o--Who----"

After a time Walter Lord went on, in a slightly altered tone:

"I don't know how it was, but little Rosamond never showed the slightest effect of her mother's fearful experience, while Anne, poor little Anne, not only will bear, as long as she lives, a terrible birthmark, but her whole character seemed to be affected by it. Whether it was the shock to her mother's entire nervous system, or whether it was because she was not like other children, I can't tell, but she was painfully, almost morbidly, shy and retiring. She came down here to school only when she was forced to do so, and the rest of the time she spent with her father, whom she positively adored. I think the fact that he was blind and could not see how badly she was disfigured may have had something to do with it, for on this point she was abnormally sensitive and self-conscious. I don't believe, strange as it may seem, that her father ever knew anything about it. There was no necessity, and I can't think any one would have been cruel enough to tell him. The few times I saw them together he showed no consciousness that there was anything amiss with his little favourite, Anne. He would stroke her smooth little face and call her his 'beautiful, little, dear girl.' In fact, so far as he could tell, there was no striking difference in the appearance of the two children, for in feature they were almost exactly alike, as you may be able to see from these photographs."

Peter studied them again, as they lay, side by side, in the warm glow of the lamp. It had not struck him before, but as he compared them, feature by feature, he could see that in childhood, at least, the two little twin sisters must have looked startlingly alike, though even at that time the expression of the two faces was strikingly dissimilar.

There was the same thick, rich, dark hair, the same smooth, broad brow, the same delicate modelling of feature, but in the case of Mary--(Rosamond, he corrected himself)--the eyes and mouth were laughing, careless, and gay, while Anne's were serious and quiet--almost tragic--a thing not good to see in one so young.

"All kinds of possibilities there," thought Peter, with a slight shake of the head. "Plenty of intelligence and nervous force--a kind of courage, too, I should imagine, with a strong little chin like that.... The devil's own lay-out for a girl, handicapped as she was----"

Walter Lord, looking at the portraits and not at Peter, did not notice his abstraction.

"Yes," he said, "they did look a lot alike, in a way, but even at that, the resemblance was only physical, and they showed more and more difference as they grew up. Their father died when they were about fifteen, and after that her mother had more difficulty than ever in controlling Rosamond. I saw a good deal of them at that time, and though she talked little about it, I could see that she was worried. Even at that age, Rosamond was careless, reckless, and extravagant. She always longed for finery, and when I brought books for little Anne, I always took a bit of ribbon or some such foolishness to Rosamond. It was wonderful to see what the child could do with the few things at her disposal. She had a sense of dress and adornment that was really remarkable."

(Peter remembered that he had read, somewhere, that Mary Blake was the most skilfully costumed woman on the stage.)

"Little Anne had it, too, in a different way. Her clothes were always quiet and pretty and suitable. Dress seemed to be a kind of instinct with both of the girls, but Rosamond's taste was almost--almost theatrical."

Peter nodded to himself.

"I suppose it was a desire for admiration," Lord went on, in his gentle, kindly voice, "that was the cause of--of the trouble that came to poor little Rosamond."

Peter pricked up his ears. Was he to learn something at last? Something of the secret, perhaps, that Mary Blake thought no one would ever know--the reason that she----

"What trouble?" asked Peter, aloud, carefully restraining his eagerness.

Walter Lord's chin was on his hand and his eyes were bent upon the two little pictures. He spoke slowly, sadly:

"It didn't happen until after their mother passed away.... I could always thank God for that.... The girls were eighteen then, well grown, tall and graceful, and Rosamond most beautiful--magnificent--though I always thought that Anne----"

Lord paused an instant and then caught up again the thread of his narrative.

"Well--no one knew exactly how it happened. On the mountain, beyond that valley over there"--he pointed through the window, where a full, bright moon lit hill and vale with tender radiance--"on the far side of the mountain there had sprung up a summer colony of city people. We saw them, once in a while, riding through here on horseback--a gay lot of young people, rich and careless....

"How Rosamond met--the man--Anne never knew. She loved her sister passionately, devotedly, but Rosamond never confided in her. All Anne knew was that Rosamond went off for long walks by herself. She'd be gone all day, and come home, laughing and happy, with a brilliant colour in her face and her eyes alight.... And then, one day, she did not come back.... Anne watched, in sleepless agony, all through the night, and in the morning she came down to me....

"We never heard from Rosamond but once.... Only once, and that was the next day. Just one letter to Anne, which she never showed me. I don't know if even she knew the name of the man.... All she said to me was: 'She's never coming back, Uncle Walter,' and then she covered her poor face with her arm and laid her head against the wall. 'She's not married to him,' she sobbed, 'and she says--oh, God!--she says she doesn't care.....'"

"So that was it," thought Peter. "That was Mary Blake's secret. Good God! How shall I tell Morris? A young, pleasure-loving, untaught, unmoral creature.... And he thinks her perfect.... What was his phrase? 'A wonder-woman'!"

Old Walter Lord talked on sadly, reminiscently, but for a long time Peter did not hear what he was saying. He was thinking--"What shall I tell Morris? How shall I tell Morris?"