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?"