The Photo-Play Journal (Jul 1919-Feb 1921)

40 P H O T O P L A Y JOURNAL 1919 work well." He looked down at Sal, who had been listening to him eagerly, and took her hand. "Pool child ! They fixed up this miserable business and then brought you away over here from your native wasteland to put the finishing touch to the hypnosis they fancied they could exert over me!" He laughed amusedly. "Do you know. Sal, why they have made such fools of themselves by asking you to help them?" "Just because I showed you the blood that night on the wasteland, I guess — and because you acted so queer about it — like it mesmerized you, you know. — But you ain't crazy, after all, are you?" He laughed again. "Hardly — although, come to think of it, I don't exactly blame them for thinking so. — As for you, Sal, now that you're here, my wife and I will interest ourselves in you and put you in school — " "But I want my mother — !" the child interrupted, turning to Virginie. "Where is she?" "In a moment," answered Virginie, hurriedly. "First, I want you to tell the truth about that dead man. Mr. Trevor thinks we fixed up the whole thing. But we didn't know anything about it till you told us. Isn't that true?" "Yes," answered Sal, reluctantly. "/ found that dead man — just like I found the blood on the wasteland — " "My blood!" exclaimed Lester, triumphantly. "That was the night, Mr. Trevor, that your wife tried to murder me ..." The half-tired, half-disgusted expression left Trevor's face. He glanced at Anne quickly, then turned away. "Wait a minute," cried Sal. "We're gettin' off the track." She turned to Virginie savagely. "Where's my mother?" There was a portentous pause. The child's insistent demand for her mother — the longed-for prize that had lured her across the sea — had impressed the entire party. In truth, it had crowded even the dead man from the stage. Trevor, in particular, was interested in Sal's desperate quest. "Speak up, Madame LePage," he said, sharply. "It's the child's right to know." Virginie was sullen. "I know nothing . . . " A cry of animal-like rage came from Sal's lips. She would have rushed at Virginie had not Trevor held her. Anne stepped forward. "I can tell you who your mother is. Sal. There she stands." She pointed at Virginie. Sal's cry of hate and revulsion was lost in Madame LePage's scream of surprised rage. She ran up to Anne, with hands lifted and fingers distended ready to choke her. "You lie." she gasped. "I the mother of that little demon? You lie, I say — you lie, you lie !" "I hate you, I hate you !" cried Sal, clawing at Virginie. "I want to go back to my ugly old dad !" she sobbed. "He always told me he'd had to run away from my mother, she was such a cat." Virginie had succeeded in controlling herself somewhat. "My word is as good as yours," she said to Anne aggressively. "Where's your proof?" "There's plenty of proof in the resemblance between you," put in Trevor, who had joined Anne and now stood beside her to give her his moral support. "Your eyes and tempers are very much alike." madame !" Virginie resumed her attack on Anne. "Where's your proof?" she repeated tauntingly. "Why don't you say something?" Anne smiled and turned to Trevor. "Do you remember," she queried in half-tender reminiscence, "how recklessly, delightfully, surpassingly you motored me to the station the day I went to London ?" An answering tenderness shone in his eyes. He put his arm around her — his first caress for many lovelorn days. In their cruelly brief instant of happiness they forgot everything around them, including the strange circumstance that had called up the sweet recollection. For one golden moment, pendant in time, they lived and loved in a wee world of their very own miraculouslv created instantaneously of ashes of roses — then Anne, shuddering, turned towards Madame LePage, who. crushed, sodden and sagging, had uttered no sound since that innocent word "London" had scorched her ears. Gazing at that face of dull despair, the others were silent. Even Sal. still hanging to Trevor and half hiding behind him, was, for the moment, stricken dumb. Virginie began tearing her gauzy linen handkerchief mechanically. She shivered slightly, sighed, then raised her eyes to Anne's. Xo woe, no anger fired them : only a new curiosity, half spent already and dim, looked flickeringly from their dark depths. "London ..." she whispered. "You went there to find out ..." "I made thorough investigations, Madame LePage. They led. of course, to the discovery that you had a child, and that Sal was that child, and that 'you had deserted her and her father ..." "Don't . . . please. It's quite true. But don't let's talk about it any more. Let's go . . . somewhere. I — " She glanced around shudderingly. "This is an awful place, this wood. I — I did leave them. He was a brute, and she — she had no right to come into the world. I had to make my way. and a child is a millstone around a woman's neck ... At that. I always expected to have her with me some day." She turned to Sal and fixed her filmy gaze upon her, then held out a tentative hand. "Child . . . I'm your mother. Come ..." But Sal hid behind Trevor, sobbing convulsively. "Go away ! I hate you I" Moaning softly, Virginie turned away. With her anguish classiscally, epically expressed with hands folded across her bosom, and her head bowed low upon it, she went away silently and impressively, like some storied tragical figure foredoomed to doom, into the deep and protecting shadows of the wood. The succeeding spellbound stillness of the group was rudely broken by Lester's discordant laugh. "A mother and her lost child are the stock tear-wringers of every third class stage manager," he remarked, satirically, "but, really, they have no place in the present drama. This is a tragedy of murder. There lies a dead man. He has been dead for days — saved from decomposition only by the bitter cold weather, which has kept him frozen stiff. The law of capital punishment obtains in this country and somebody must hang for the murder of my friend Mack. — Anne Grieve, you killed him!" Neither Anne nor Trevor scarcely had time to realize the import of his words, when a new, strange voice — a musical masculine voice in the wood behind them — answered Lester's accusation. "Anne Grieve is innocent. / killed him." And Simkin stepped out into the moonlight. Lester, in the shock of it, almost cowered. Trevor gazed at his butler in blank incredulity. And Anne, although still dazed, suddenly realized that Simkin had at last told her his secret. "I killed him," he continued, "because he murdered my beloved master." CHAPTER XXII The motor car drew up at the piazza steps, and Virginie, Lester and Sal hurried into it for the desperate race to Caermarthen to catch the late train for London. Lester had to carry the child, whose incredible fury had reduced her to a state of semi-stupor. The activity attending the departure roused her, however, and she fought him, bit him, clawed him, shrieking that she would not go. But the car made a heedless sweep down the driveway, and the sound of her shrill lamenting died away. Anne, who had said good-bye from the doorway, sighed wearily as she turned and re-entered the house. She gave a start at seeing a dim figure coming down the hall stairs. It was Johanna Lane. Anne waited. The maid approached, then turned and gazed fixedly up the stairs. "He's gone ..." she murmured in monotone. "He came. Now he's gone. — And I loved him ... !" A faint cry — surely soundless and yet a cry articulate and dreadful — came up deviously, irresistibly from below the oppressing super-structures over the pale and stony soul, and she beat her hands upon the air. "I love him," she whispered, turning to Anne. "He doesn't know that I kissed his pillow . . . and he will not know that I'm going out into the night to kiss — Death." And so she left the Black House, not seeing Anne's look of horror, not hearing Anne's word of pity. But she must have seen another face, a face whiter than her own : and she must have heard another voice, the siren voice of the sleep that is sweet and dreamless. For Anne could almost see these new and beautiful comprehensions in her eyes. For Johanna in loving had learned to live : and in living had learned to die. For of such is the heart's great secret. When Anne returned to the library she found Trevor still reading the confession she had forced from Lester. It was an interesting document, yet disappointingly limited in scope. It did not deal with Anne's early life or explain his own connection with her. His own bovhood vears were not touched upon. He exculpated Anne from all his charges of wrong-doing, but repeated his statement that she had stabbed him on the wasteland, although admitting she had just cause for so doing, as he had hounded her systematically and mercilesslv for vears. This unrelenting pursuit of her, he declared, was occasioned by the fact that she was necessary to his conspiracy to gain possession of the Tremaine name and fortune. He went on to sav that she had refused from the first to become his ally in the undertaking, but he continued to hope that by some means, fair or otherwise, he might coax or compel her to help him. "It's odd," commented Trevor, looking up at Anne, who stood on the other side of the table, "how he leaves out the very things that are really vital. For instance, how did he ever happen to conceive such an impossible conspiracy, why did he make me the central figure of it. and why were you necessary to its execution?" Anne only smiled faintly in reply. Trevor sighed and continued reading the confession, which grew more dull and perfunctory as it neared the end. Lester admitted that he had impersonated the gardener. Duggan. who had stolen the Tremaine familv tree and Bible: and these articles, together with